Here you can read about everything that's happening in the ISB Group.
A couple of
weeks ago, Hao held a halftime presentation of his master thesis work. His master thesis involves multi-level and
multi-scale simulations of the insulin signaling network and whole body metabolism.
The aim is to evaluate the insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes and its long term
effect on glucose dynamics in the human body.
After the
presentation, we went out for a celebratory lunch at von Dufva!
We have published an opinion paper in Interface Focus:
In the paper, we present an analysis of the current
situation where mathematical modeling steadily becomes more and more
appreciated as a tool in biomedical research and in drug development projects.
However, there are still major issues to overcome before modeling can become
one of the mainstream tools in such projects, and even more so before modeling
can be used directly in the actual treatment of patients. We review current
state-of-the-art models in diabetes research and address the most important
issues to overcome before such models can be used in drug development and in
the clinic.
We involved authors from AstraZeneca, Uppsala University,
and Eindhoven Technical University with competences reaching from disease
progression modeling, to mixed-effect PKPD modeling in the field of diabetes to
get a broad take on the subject. The paper is part of a theme issue The
Human Physiome: a necessary key to the creative destruction of medicine
organized by Stig W. Omholt and Peter Hunter from the Virtual Physiological
Human institute.
It is my pleasure to announce that two projects which has modellers from the systems biology core facility involved has been chosen as this years flagship projects for CMIV (Center for Medical Image science and Visualisation). One is the SAND:MAN project, in which we are modelling the neurovascular coupling that is the link between the neuronal activity of the brain and the signal measured in an MRI scanner when we study the activity of the brain. This will give us a deeper understanding of how the brain works and how the neuronal signalling changes in different diseases and disorders of the brain.
The other project is the non-invasive liver biopsy (NILB) project in which we models how contrast fluid travels through the liver and how that differs between healthy persons and patients who have liver disease. This model is being developed into a tool that will help medical doctors make better diagnosis for their patients.
The flagship projects were presented at a seminar on the 29th of February at CMIV. The third flagship project is the Seeing Organ Function project, which is also connected to the SAND:MAN project.
All the new flagship projects will soon be featured with a more in depth presentation on the front page of the CMIV webpage.
I’m Tim
Beishuizen, a Dutch student at Eindhoven, University of Technology. Currently I
am doing a dual master’s program Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science
and Engineering. At the ending of my Bachelor Biomedical Engineering I was
wondering what to do in my Master phase. My interests were broad and so I
finally chose to study three more years in a combination of two masters.
After searching
a good place to have an internship, I came in contact with Gunnar Cedersund and
the ISB group. Soon after we agreed on a project for my internship I came to
Linköping and started the project. The project is a continuation of the Markus
Karlsson’s Master’s Thesis. It is about creating simplified models of more
complex models to reduce complexity and computation time, also known as
metamodeling. I particularly focus on partial least squares regression in
combination with non-linear mixed effects to retrieve the best results.
Aside from
the project I am in Linköping to see something from Sweden as well. I haven’t
been in Sweden before and would like to experience what it has to offer. Taking
a break from life in The Netherlands, I can meet new people and find out the
Swedish living style.
After taking almost 1.5 year Biomedical Engineering Master program here in Linkoping University, it is a new journey for me to join the ISBgroup to do my Master Thesis work. Differing from the daily courses I took before, working with people in ISBgroup is a brand new experience, the whole atmosphere is relaxing while they have a very precise attitude on academy.
Now I am working on the Multi-level modeling project which has very little in common with the knowledge I had before. However, it doesn’t become a problem due to the help from a two-week pre-course where some background information and basic skills were taught. Gunnar is the lecturer of that course and after taking it, I know it will be a very interesting period of time for me to work with this project and the people in ISBgroup.
My Master thesis started around the middle of the February and I’ll work on it for 4 to 5 months, with the help and cooperation with all ISBgroup members, the following time will be full of challenge and fun!
For the
last couple of years the students in Engineering Biology (TB) have done their bachelor’s
projects under our supervision. This year is no different! Right now the
students are finishing phase 1, where they are learning about systems biology
and how to implement, optimize, and analyze models. They are also right now
meeting their customers for the projects they will start on later this spring.
This year
we have four exciting projects. In the first project, the students will attempt
to unravel new insights of intracellular signaling in different tissues. They
will at the same time attempt to bridge the understandings of insulin signaling
with adrenergic signaling. The end-goal is to gain new knowledge of metabolic
and cardiovascular diseases.
In the
second project, the insulin-glucose dynamics at the whole-body level is the
focus. Three subgroups will work with variating glucose levels in the Intensive
Care Unit (ICU), the interplay between insulin, glucose and NEFA, and the long term
effects of antioxidants respectively.
In the third project, five students will work together to understand
important aspects of the immune system. By modeling both the transcription of
genes within T-cells, and by bench marking the algorithms to do so, important
aspects of diseases, e.g. allergy, can be explained. This work is
potentially important in a wide variety of applications, both for drug
development, diagnosis, and for understanding of the pathology involved in a
wide variety of diseases.
In final
project, five students will work in a combined effort to further improve the
current understanding of the fMRI-BOLD response and its underlying neurovascular coupling.
They will contribute towards explaining current research questions such as
blood flow regulation in ischemia patients, neural metabolism and potential
bio-markers for brain function. By this, we aim towards bridging the gap
between our modelling efforts and future clinical applications.
These projects
have been started already now but will take on full speed during the second
half of the spring. Three times the students will present their ongoing
findings, and during the final presentation this spring one group might find
themselves the winner of the yearly logo-competition.
Last years winners of the prestigeous trophy: “Improvement of a Mathematical Liver Model for Diagnosis and Surgical Planning”
I already joined the
ISB group last summer, but left in late August to travel some of the countries in Southeast Asia. A couple of months have now passed and I have now returned to
the office for another 5 months.
I first got
into contact with the group during my Bachelor’s thesis last year, where I was
part of a two-man team of Engineering Biology students who did a project
regarding adiponectin release in fat cells. I then applied for an internship at
ISB-group, got accepted and started in June 2015.
Since then I have been working with the minimization of a previously created mathematical
model aimed at describing the desensitization of G protein-coupled β2 adrenergic
receptors which are crucial
for heart muscle contraction.
As I
already stated, I took a break from science and my studies for 4 months to travel
in Southeast Asia. There, my days were spent with things like hiking through
the rice fields in the mountain regions of northern Vietnam, joining a Muay-Thai
training camp in Thailand, scuba diving and of course relaxing by various
beaches throughout the region.
Although last year was an amazing experience I
could not be more thrilled to be back at ISB group to continue with my project and
hopefully reach more satisfying results than I did last summer.
If you like
to know more about me, meet me, poke me, see me or speak with me about anything you want – then come
find me during working hours at Gunnar’s office at floor 13.
(Here is a
picture of me feeding a monkey)
As a Medical Informatics student from the Netherlands, I will do an internship project for 4,5 month at ISB Group. I arrived just three weeks ago and I already feel at home both at ISB Group and Sweden in general (as you can see in the photo).
My background consists of three years of Medicine bachelor (in Rotterdam, NL) and three years of Medical Informatics bachelor (Amsterdam, NL). I switched from my first to my second bachelor, because I missed the technical challenge a lot. This internship will lead to a thesis that will conclude the last-mentioned bachelor.
The project I am doing at ISB Group consists of the making of an advanced model for the prediction of cardiovascular disease in diabetes patients. Hopefully this predictive model will become more accurate and adaptive to the individual patient than existing models. In order to achieve this, a Bayesian network will be used, instead of the more common regression analysis.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of the months here in Sweden! Luckily there are lots of activities for internationals in Linköping, which you can also visit if you’re not in an official exchange program like me.
