Systems biology approaches help to facilitate interpretation of cross-species comparisons

Translation of biological knowledge from animal models to humans is an important step in the development of therapeutics, but there remain limitations for effective translation. Systems biology offers approaches to understand the limitations for translation between species through data-driven models, such as methods that rely on learning patterns from data, and mechanism-driven models of biological processes, such as pharmacokinetic models. Here, we describe recent advances in both data-driven and mechanism-driven systems biology approaches to better understand limitations to translation from animal models to humans. Both approaches to modeling have their strengths and weaknesses but still provide key biological insight for translating between model systems and humans (Fig. 1). The presented methods not only identify differences between different model organisms but also provide opportunities to identify shared biomarkers and unique biological insight.