Systems Biology of Preterm Birth: A Pilot Study

Stephen Lye at Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada and his team will initiate a pilot study that will use a systems biology analysis of genomic, proteomic and plasma markers to identify novel pathways and biomarkers to preterm birth, as well as define the risk of preterm birth in pregnant women. Previous efforts to identify pathways or biomarkers associated with preterm birth have focused on single methodological approaches. With new capabilities in computational analyses, it is now possible to integrate information from multiple analytic techniques - collectively known as systems biology - to derive informative pathways and potential diagnostic biomarkers.