The ISBGroup Blog

This autumn, we welcome a new student in our group: Valentin
Kindesjö

​Hello! My name is Valentin Kindesjö. I started medical
school at Linköping University in the spring of 2015 after studying a year and
a half of biomedical engineering. For the autumn of 2017, I have found my way
back to IMT to join ISB group for a project in mathematical modelling, where I will
be continuing the work of previous students (most recently Johanna Fridberger
and Thirza Poot) in expanding a multi-level model over the regulation of
glucose, insulin and fatty acids, created by joining a glucose- and insulin
model created by Dalla Man et al and a NEFA model, created by Jelic et al as an
expansion on a model by Fianne Sips. I will be working to make the NEFA part of
this model more physiologically correct. Hopefully, this work will bring us
closer to finding out the exact role played by adipose tissue in maintaining
the systemic energy homeostasis, and shed some light over the dynamic interplay
between the different mechanism involved in the storage and release of fatty
acids.

I am spending my autumn in Oxford, at the group of Fredrik
Karpe, professor of metabolic medicine at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes,
Endocrinology and Metabolism, who conducted the experiments where the data I
will be using was collected.

On October 26, 2006 ~ 10 years ago! – Gunnar Cedersund defended his PhD thesis. This was the start of the process of creating the reseach group isbgroup.eu. To celebrate the 10-year mark, we have decided to arrange on January 14th 2017 a reunion party for anyone who has been involved so far!

Event: Reunion

Location: Linköping (Specifics tbd)

Date: 14th January 2017

If you’re interested in the current projects or how your past project has fared, you’ll get the chance to catch up during the evening. We are also very interested in the path you’ve chosen, so if you can, please do join us and tell us what you have been up to since we last saw you in the group. The day will consist of some lectures and general social interactions with the chance to see what has happened with everyone in the day, and a BIG party in the evening.

In case your invitation got lost in the Internet, please contact us at reunion@isbgroup.eu to reserve. We hope to see you in Linköping in January!

Regards,
The reunion committee

Gunnar Cedersund
Elin Nyman
Rikard Johansson
Karin Lundengård
Fredrik Eklund
Johanna Fridberger

PS. Below are some group pictures to help you reminisce.

Gunnar defending his thesis 2006.

ISB group 2010.

ISB group 2012.

ISB group 2015.

During the autumn we have three new students in our group
Nicolas, Fredrik, and Johanna: The latest students to join our group.

Here’s their introduction

Nicolas

I’m
a student at Linköpings university, studying for a masters of science in
engineering biology, I have finished my third year but have decided to take a
break to work as an intern at the ISB group.

The
project I’m involved with at the moment revolves around studying the regulatory
mechanisms that control the antioxidant levels in the body. Antioxidants are
generally believed to be unregulated and simply accumulate upon continuous
intake and such an accumulation could help explain the many health benefits
observed when eating antioxidant rich foods. However this accumulation has
never been observed for more than a few hours after intake. The results of
previous studies show that there is reason to believe that the antioxidant
levels are regulated by homeostasis. The purpose of this project is to use
systems biology to investigate the regulatory mechanisms involved with
antioxidant metabolism and see if there is a homeostatic regulation of the
body’s antioxidant capacity. This project will continue and expand upon the
project I did for my bachelor thesis in the spring of 2016 where I investigated
the regulatory mechanisms that control the antioxidant capacity (AOC) in the
cytoplasm and used mathematical modelling and prediction analysis in order try
to predict how the AOC levels would change after a single dose of antioxidants
are given to a test subject. At my disposal i had access to data collected from
experimental studies conducted at Newcastle university. With the results from
my bachelors project I was able to provide the team in Newcastle with a decision
basis for how to design a new experimental study which they conducted in the
summer of 2016. I will use this data, collected from the latest study in
Newcastle to continue investigating how antioxidant capacity is regulated and
also investigate how different test subjects react differently using nonlinear
mixed-effect modelling.

Fredrik

My
name is Fredrik Eklund and my background lies in bioengineering, with a focus
on materials and biosensors. I’m currently working on my master’s degree thesis
in the field of systems biology, however. The project I’m involved in is a
continuation of previous students’ work on a statistical heart attack model. It
is a predictive model meant to be used as decision support by doctors. In its
core, a Bayesian network is trained to understand relationships between a large
number of parameters. The trained network is then used on a new patient’s
measurements for prediction. Based on the result, a medical practitioner can
then take the appropriate course of action.

Johanna
My name
is Johanna Fridberger and I am a new member of the ISB group. I will be staying
for one semester conducting a project on the model developed by Fianne Sips described
in the article ”Model-Based Quantification of the Systemic Interplay between
Glucose and Fatty Acids in the Postprandial State” in which I will exchange the current NEFA (Non-Esterified Fatty Acids)
part of the model to one that better describes physiological conditions. This
is possible thanks to new data on NEFA homeostasis. I am doing the project as
part of my education in medicine at Linköping University, now reaching the end
of the third year. I have really enjoyed working in this group so far, and I am
excited over the next couple of months here!