Dévoilement de la feuille de route du système immunitaire virtuel
Un plan étape par étape pour un effort international visant à créer un jumeau numérique du système immunitaire humain sera présenté dans un article qui sera publié aujourd’hui (20 mai 2022) dans le journal njp Digital Medicine.
“Cet article présente une feuille de route que la communauté scientifique devrait suivre pour construire, développer et appliquer un jumeau numérique du système immunitaire”, a déclaré Tomas Helikar, biochimiste de l’Université de Nebraska-Lincoln, qui est l’un des 10 co-auteurs de six universités du monde entier. Plus tôt cette année, les National Institutes of Health ont renouvelé une subvention de 1,8 million de dollars sur cinq ans pour permettre à Helikar de poursuivre ses travaux dans ce domaine.
“C’est un effort qui nécessitera la collaboration de biologistes computationnels, d’immunologistes, de cliniciens, de mathématiciens et d’informaticiens”, a-t-il déclaré. “Essayer de décomposer cette complexité en étapes mesurables et réalisables a été un défi. Cet article y remédie.”
“Le rêve et l’objectif sont qu’il soit utilisé pour la médecine de précision au niveau d’un individu.” – Tomas Helikar
Un jumeau numérique du système immunitaire serait une percée qui pourrait offrir une médecine de précision pour un large éventail d’affections, notamment le cancer, les maladies auto-immunes et les infections virales comme COVID-19.
Helikar’s involvement has been inspired in part by his 7-year-old son, who required a lung transplant as an infant. This has resulted in a life-long careful balancing of his immune system through powerful immunosuppression drugs to prevent organ rejection while keeping infections and other diseases at bay.
While the first step is to create a generic model that reflects common biological mechanisms, the eventual goal is to make virtual models at the individual level. That would enable doctors to deliver treatments precisely designed for the individual.
“The dream and goal are for it to be used for precision medicine at the level of an individual,” Helikar said. “Importantly, we change over time. Our immune system is programmed, reprogrammed, and tweaked over time. It develops from birth and as we get older, it continues developing, often in ways we don’t like. It becomes weaker, we have cancers and our immune system is not keeping up. Our goal is to create digital twins that are not just specific to ourselves, but specific to that point in time – taking into consideration all of our past.”
The authors of “Building Digital Twins of the Human Immune System: Toward a Roadmap” are part of an umbrella working group of about 200 scientists organized for multiscale modeling of viral pandemics. The inter-agency working group is led by Reinhard Laubenbacher of the University of Florida and James Glazier of Indiana University, both co-authors of the May 20 report. Since May, Helikar has been co-leading the working group with Glazier.
Other co-authors include Gary An of the University of Vermont, Anna Niakaris of Université Paris-Saclay, and Rahuman S. Malik Sheriff of the European Bioinformatics Institute.
“Digital twins, customized simulation models pioneered in industry, are beginning to be deployed in medicine and healthcare, with some major successes in cardiovascular diagnostics and in insulin pump control,” the article says. “More advanced medical digital twins will be essential to making precision medicine a reality. Because the immune system plays an important role in such a wide range of diseases and health conditions, from fighting pathogens to autoimmune disorders, digital twins of the immune system will have especially high impact.”
While the quest could take years and hundreds of millions of dollars, Hellikar believes it is achievable.
“I think we have enough data and technological advancements in terms of methods and software tools, that the first draft or first version of the virtual immune system could be built with data that already exists. It may not be personalizable yet, but you could start with it as a working prototype.”
Helikar is committed to completing the project.
“As long as there’s a possibility that this can be done, if it can help my son, that’s my mission,” he said.
Reference: “Building Digital Twins of the Human Immune System: Toward a Roadmap” 20 May 2022, npj Digital Medicine.
DOI: 10.1038/s41476-022-00610-z
Funding: NIH/National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation