Patent ID: 8112230

Claim:
A computer implemented method for determining synergistic effect of a medicine combination including two medicines relating to a disease on the basis of a gene network and medicine-effective genes of each and/or any of said two medicines, comprising: determining a synergy factor (ST 1,2 ) of said two medicines, by a computer, on the basis of distribution of medicine-effective genes of said two medicines in said gene network; determining a medicine similarity factor AS 1,2 of said two medicines by a computer, on the basis of similarity between a set of symptoms which one of said two medicines relates to and set of symptoms which another of said two medicines relates to; determining extent of synergistic effect of said two medicines, by a computer, according to a product of said synergy factor and said similarity factor; wherein said step of determining a synergy factor (ST 1,2 ) of said two medicines comprises: for each medicine of said two medicines, determining, by a computer, a node importance factor (IP) for each gene in a subset of medicine-effective genes of said medicine; taking a value representing a normalized weighted average of said node importance factor (IP) over said subset as said synergy factor (ST 1, 2 ), wherein the weight of each node importance factor (IP) of said weighted average is negatively correlated to the minimum of the shortest network paths among medicine-effective genes of said two medicines, and said step of determining said medicine similarity factor (AS 1,2 ) of said two medicines comprises: determining, by a computer, a symptom similarity factor (P i,j ) between a symptom which one of said two medicines relates to and a symptom which another of said two medicines relates to, taking a value representing an average of said symptom similarity factor (P i,j ) over a set of symptoms which at least one of said two medicines relates to as said medicine similarity factor (AS 1,2 ).