Immune digital twins for complex human pathologies: applications, limitations, and challenges

Anna Niarakis*, Reinhard Laubenbacher, Gary An, Yaron Ilan, Jasmin Fisher, Asmund Flobak, Kristin Reiche, Maria Rodriguez Martinez, Liesbet Geris, Luiz Ladeira, Lorenzo Veschini, Michael L. Blinov, Francesco Messina, Luis L. Fonseca, Sandra Ferreira, Arnau Montagud, Vincent Noel, Malvina Marku, Eirini Tsirvouli, Marcella M. TorresLeonard A. Harris, T. J. Sego, Chase Cockrell, Amanda E. Shick, Hasan Balci, Albin Salazar, Kinza Rian, Ahmed Abdelmonem Hemedan, Marina Esteban-Medina, Bernard Staumont, Esteban Hernandez-Vargas, B. Shiny Martis, Alejandro Madrid-Valiente, Panagiotis Karampelesis, Luis Sordo Vieira, Pradyumna Harlapur, Alexander Kulesza, Niloofar Nikaein, Winston Garira, Rahuman S. Malik Sheriff, Juilee Thakar, Van Du T. Tran, Jose Carbonell-Caballero, Soroush Safaei, Alfonso Valencia, Andrei Zinovyev, James A. Glazier

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal(Systematic) Review article peer-review

Abstract

Digital twins represent a key technology for precision health. Medical digital twins consist of computational models that represent the health state of individual patients over time, enabling optimal therapeutics and forecasting patient prognosis. Many health conditions involve the immune system, so it is crucial to include its key features when designing medical digital twins. The immune response is complex and varies across diseases and patients, and its modelling requires the collective expertise of the clinical, immunology, and computational modelling communities. This review outlines the initial progress on immune digital twins and the various initiatives to facilitate communication between interdisciplinary communities. We also outline the crucial aspects of an immune digital twin design and the prerequisites for its implementation in the clinic. We propose some initial use cases that could serve as "proof of concept" regarding the utility of immune digital technology, focusing on diseases with a very different immune response across spatial and temporal scales (minutes, days, months, years). Lastly, we discuss the use of digital twins in drug discovery and point out emerging challenges that the scientific community needs to collectively overcome to make immune digital twins a reality.
Original languageEnglish
Article number141
Number of pages14
JournalNPJ systems biology and applications
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • SOFA SCORE
  • SEPSIS
  • CANCER
  • STANDARD
  • CRITERIA
  • DRIVEN

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