Overview

The multidisciplinary training area in Pharmacology and Systems Biology (PSB) represents one of the MTA's that compose the Ph.D. Program of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

PSB is a multi-departmental, interdisciplinary training area focused on understanding the mechanisms of human and mammalian physiology, pathophysiology and drug action. The cutting-edge mechanistic clinically-relevant study of drug effects and of the emergent properties of systems relevant to health and disease requires a deep foundation in molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry. These core biological disciplines are studied in the core curriculum in a guided self-directed manner and within the context of physiology and disease pathogenesis. Quantitative reasoning and computational approaches are also integrated in the core curriculum and in seminar/journal club activities. This integration recognizes the complexity of mammalian physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology and the large genomic, proteomic, biochemical and structural data-sets often involved in their study. The training area benefits from two institutional training grants, Integrated Training in Pharmacological Sciences as well as the Endocrinology Training Grant. The educational and research environment created by two large scale NIH-funded multi-institutional systems biology programs lead by Mount Sinai, the New York Center for Systems Biology (SBCNY) and also the Program for Research on Immune Modeling and Experimentation (PRIME) which interfaces immunology with systems biology.

The PSB curriculum emphasizes an integrated combination of approaches ranging from molecular and cell biology to systems modeling, from single cell model systems to organ systems, whole animal studies, animal models and genetics. The principal of systems biology as it applies to the study of disease is that the health and disease state of a cell, organ or organism results not from a single molecule or factor but from the emergent state of a network of interactions. Systems biology provides the experimental and computational tools necessary to understand, predict and influence the behavior of the networks underlying cell, organ and organism function and pathophysiology. Students are taught how the insights gained from different types of investigations can lead to new therapeutic and preventive strategies and to apply this paradigm to their own research.

How to Apply