Systems Biology Consortium for Infectious Diseases

Infectious diseases continue to be major health concerns worldwide. In the twenty-first century, more people are at risk of life-threatening acute and chronic infections than ever before due to the ongoing tremendous social and ecological changes. The need of the time is to develop new diagnostic, therapeutic, and curative, prophylactic strategies, which should be based on detailed understanding of the immensely complex relationship between pathogens and their hosts. Here, systems biology plays an important role. But currently the traditional, reductionist approaches to investigate this dynamic interaction often lack the scale and/or scope to faithfully model the dual and codependent nature of this relationship. This is limiting the success of translational efforts. This chapter highlights the global trends in infectious diseases until the pandemic happened in 2019–2020. With different aspects of systems biology in relation to the host–pathogen relationships for the infections that have become a burden to mankind, the new analytical strategies adapted to model host–pathogen relationships for translational applications have been discussed. Understanding this concept in detail can drive innovation and discovery. The goal of discovering the predictive signs of disease and developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to alleviate this burden can be achieved. It would be able to provide solutions to these complex public health challenges and disease outbreaks.