MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Systems Immunology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1630488
This article is part of the Research TopicModeling the Immune System: from PK/PD to Systems ImmunologyView all 8 articles
Systems Immunology: When Systems Biology Meets Immunology
Provisionally accepted
- 1Abvance Biotech SL, Madrid, Spain
- 2Margarita Salas Center for Biological Research, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
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The immune system is an intricate network of cells, cytokines, chemokines, and signaling pathways that coordinate protective responses and, when dysregulated, drive immune-related diseases. Understanding this complexity increasingly relies on systems-based mathematical and computational approaches, which integrate multi-omics data, mechanistic models, and artificial intelligence to reveal the emergent behavior of immune networks. In this mini-review, we discuss the central methodological pillars of systems immunology, including Network Pharmacology, artificial intelligence, and quantitative systems pharmacology. We highlight illustrative applications spanning autoimmune, inflammatory, and infectious diseases, and describe how these methods are used to identify biomarkers, optimize therapies, and guide drug discovery. Finally, we examine current challenges and future directions, including data quality, model validation, and regulatory considerations, which must be addressed to translate systems immunology into clinical impact. This integrated perspective aims to guide both method developers and translational researchers, emphasizing the growing role of computational modeling in next-generation immunology and therapeutic innovation.
Keywords: immunology1, mechanistic models2, Bioinformatics3, Systems Biology4, Systems Immunology5, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology6, Network pharmacology7, Artificial Intelligence8
Received: 17 May 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alfonso-González, Fernández and Vega. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Francisco José Fernández, Abvance Biotech SL, Madrid, Spain
M. Cristina Vega, Margarita Salas Center for Biological Research, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.