Network-based cancer precision medicine: A new emerging paradigm

The complex interactions in biological systems have been shown to affect the response to single-targeted therapies which were initially developed under the "reductionist paradigm" of cancer precision medicine. To address these fundamental challenges, great efforts have been dedicated from a network perspective to explore the mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis and progression and to extend our understanding of cancer as a complex disease, which is exploiting new advances in cancer diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. This review summarizes recent progress of network applications in cancer precision medicine research, including biomarker identification, cancer patient stratification and network target recognition, highlights network-based systematic integrations across macro and micro networks, and discusses the tremendous potential of this new emerging network-based "systems paradigm" for precision medicine, which would ultimately make substantial progress for fighting cancer.