Introducing Systems Biomedicine

Western medicine, according to definitions from the NCI Dictionary, Macmillan Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary, is based on treating symptoms and diseases using drugs, surgery, and such. An alternative definition, which I first heard from my friend and colleague Dr Dolfin, is that Western medicine is based on embracing, without prejudice, any form of treatment that works. If a specific mode of treatment, even without any known mechanism, would be scientifically proven to cure the common flu, this mode of treatment would be immediately adopted and inducted to the hall of fame of Western medicine. Systems biology, through beautiful implementations, some high impact publications and much through membership of some brilliant scientists, has gained a foothold in the scientific agenda. Still, it is sometime difficult to bring forward ideas that come from the implementation of systems biology approaches, to publication. Such papers might not always follow the specific model of what a paper should look like to get accepted for publication in an experimentally oriented journal. Nor would it exactly fit computational journals, mathematical journals or engineering. Systems Biomedicine, the title of this new journal and what we feel is an actual underlying current of production in biomedicine, is about embracing methods from systems biology for their practical uses in biomedicine. We call for manuscripts that answer this very broad definition. Further, we do so without the need to exactly define what systems biology is. The definition of systems biology remains elusive, even after some very clever insights from many researchers (an interesting collection of videos is available here http://www.youtube.com/systemTHINK). Yet, we know systems biology when we see it. Avoiding a proper definition of systems biology and defining Systems Biomedicine as the implementation of systems biology to biomedical practice is done, in the context of this journal, in a similar manner to the definition suggested above for Western medicine. That is, to embrace, without prejudice, systems biology approaches, methods and insight with direct implementation to improving health.