News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Expect More Multiplex Clinical Laboratory Testing as Systems Biology Moves Closer to Clinical Practice

PeaceHealth and the P4 Medicine Institute will partner to encourage clinical use of systems-biology based diagnostics in community care settings

PACIFIC NORTHWEST—In the Pacific Northwest, PeaceHealth has become the first community health system to join the P4 Medicine Institute http://p4mi.org/ (P4Mi) in an important collaboration to demonstrate practical clinical applications of systems biology in patient care. P4Mi is itself a spin-off of the Institute for Systems Biology that was founded in 2000 by Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D., and several colleagues.

This is a partnership that pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will want to follow. It shows how innovators in molecular biology are pushing forward to engage community hospitals and physicians’ offices in the fast-developing field of systems biology. Their ambitious goal is to achieve early—even pre-symptomatic—diagnosis through the use of multiplex diagnostic assays to analyze genes and proteins.

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Rapid Progress in Systems Biology Predicted to Increase Multiplex Testing by Clinical Pathology Laboratories

Trend from reductionism to holistic biomedicine means clinical laboratories and pathologists should expect increased multiplex testing

Systems biology (SB) is a rapidly-evolving area of research that, by itself, could greatly expand the need for multiplex testing performed by clinical laboratories. But systems biology has yet to catch the full attention of either the media or Wall Street.

That may soon change. Despite the complexity of human metabolic systems, experts in systems biology are making progress in identifying the myriad of metabolic channels that collectively can be used to diagnose disease and identify appropriate therapies. These are auspicious developments for medical laboratory managers and pathologists.

Probably no single individual has done more to advance the field of systems biology than Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D. In 2000, he co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, Washington and his colleagues engaged scientists across a number of fields to study the metabolic processes of humans and other organisms.
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