Treatments Will Evolve as Our Understanding of Patient’s Disease is Enhanced by the Evolving Science
Paradigm Shift. We can make faster progress in understanding brain function and dysfunction across diseases by adopting a systems approach that redefines disease by mechanism across the human lifecycle.
The very bases by which we currently classify the heterogeneous array of conditions we call brain disorders, has been called into question (Regier, 2007). Importantly, the current nosological categories fail to align with findings emerging from clinical neuroscience and genetics (Insel etal., 2010). Additional many of our tools for assessment and diagnosis (e.g. scales & questionnaires) are relatively crude (Nutt and Goodwin, 2011).
As we transition from a descriptive to a mechanistic approach that reveals principles of cells, cellular networks, organs, and emergent behavior and their interactions across several spatial and temporal scales, we will need to embrace mathematical and computational approaches to help us integrate, interrogate and visualize data to enable knowledge discovery.
In the Systems Biology approach being championed by Orion Bionetworks, bioinformatics and computational biology are used to provide a research platform to acquire, manage, analyze, and display large amounts of data, allowing the Community to focus hypothesis-driven approaches only on the most promising avenues.
The essential and unique role that Orion Bionetworks can play to enable the Shift in Paradigm, articulated above, is to define a Roadmap for Brain Disorders, act as a Central Coordinating organization, connecting disparate organizations and efforts, serving as an integrator, and empirically testing and widely disseminating successful new models.
Orion Bionetworks’ Bionetwork Programs are organized around the central goal of accelerating time to cure for brain disease.
GENERAL PROGRAM GOALS:
- Quantification. Scale up multi-modal data collection through prospective observational clinical, biomarker & biosensors study of individuals with brain disease phenotypes and capture real-time, real-world health outcomes using patient powered networks.
- Computation. Build new models at different scales using expanded array of analytics approaches, engage additional computational partners & expand community.
- Validation. Test and validate our models against clinical and basic science constructs.
- Knowledge Engineering. Expand toolbox of data management, simulation, and other knowledge engineering tools
- Education & Dissemination. Disseminate models & insights through multiple channels and partners.
Over the next 2-3 years Orion Bionetworks will be “prototyping” several new approaches through focused, programs in specified disease areas. This approach will allow us to rapidly and empirically test the utility of new collaboration models, policies, technologies, tools while directly benefiting the respective disease healthcare community.
The following Science & Technology Domains have been identified as part of our Initial Roadmap:
- Large Scale Biomarker Research
- Biosensors
- Patient Networks & Mobile Health Assessment Platforms
- Information Technology & Knowledge Management
- Data Standards & Tools
- Computational Disease Modeling & Analytics
These domains will be explored within the following Disease-focused Programs:
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Prodromal Schizophrenia
- Neurodegenerative (e.g. dementia, ALS, PD)
Our programs & projects will be managed tightly, with predetermined milestones and deliverables and with a core mission to create data and tools that are useful to as many researchers as possible.
