Share Our Adventure…

The eight years since my colleagues and I established ISB have been extraordinarily exciting. We now realize that systems biology will not only revolutionize the practice of biology, but within the next decade it will also transform medicine from its current reactive mode to something we call P4Medicine™ (predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory).

P4Medicine™ will develop tools like organ-specific biomarkers to identify and treat disease early, even before symptoms develop. It will use personal genetic sequence information to determine individual susceptibility to disease, and essentially "pre-treat" people to restore or eliminate malfunctioning genes in a manner that reduces or eliminates the likelihood of developing future disease. It will change the world.

This year, Thompson Scientific, an international science publisher, rated ISB´s researchers sixth in the impact of their research papers that appeared between 2002 and 2006. According to Thompson, ISB research was cited more times per published paper by other researchers around the world than the papers of faculty at Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Yale and many other research powerhouses.

Another measure of our impact is the dramatic increase in the number of institutions focused on systems biology. In 2000 ISB was virtually alone. Today more than 60 institutes across the globe focus on systems biology, and the US National Institutes of Health has directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward systems biology research.

ISB´s leadership is predicated on our partnerships with visionary individuals and institutions, which have the energy and the generosity to change the world. Together, we are bringing about healthcare that prevents disease, including cancer, or treats it effectively, even before it is symptomatic.

Please share the road ahead with us.

Sincerely,

Lee Hood, President