The application of transcriptional blood signatures to enhance our understanding of the host response to infection: the example of tuberculosis.

Despite advances in antimicrobials, vaccination and public health measures, infectious diseases remain a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. With the increase in antimicrobial resistance and the emergence of new pathogens, there remains a need for new and more accurate diagnostics, the ability to monitor adequate treatment response as well as the ability to predict prognosis for an individual. Transcriptional approaches using blood signatures have enabled a better understanding of the host response to diseases, leading not only to new avenues of basic research, but also to the identification of potential biomarkers for use in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring.

Systems approaches to studying the immune response in tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a disease of considerable mortality and morbidity. Studies employing microarrays to derive transcriptional profiles of the host response during TB, which combined with data from experimental systems have highlighted a potentially detrimental role for type I interferons during infection, with important implications for vaccine and therapeutic development. In addition, these studies have provided candidate biomarkers which may advance diagnosis and treatment monitoring. These studies thus exemplify the promise of a systems biology approach to study complex infectious disease such as TB.