Systems psychopharmacology: A network approach to developing novel therapies

Figure 4 Molecular disease network. A: With two “hubs” (big, dark circles, showing high connectivity profiles) and six “bottlenecks” (dark circles), inserted in pathways (one pathway highlighted in bold), plus additional molecular nodes, tentatively disturbing network oscillations (spiral nodes, belonging to disease network); B: Subtle disturbances of network harmony by molecular nodes of minor importance (spiral nodes) may substantially interfere on a long-term scale in their summation with network oscillations and result in disease. Drugs with multi-target properties (circle upper right, strong, dashed lines), or multiple drugs with specificities for only one or a few targets (rectangles in periphery, weak, dashed lines) may address nodes of disease networks and reset disease networks to networks characteristic of healthy states.