Centre for Mathematical Modeling - Human Health and Disease

The goal of the Centre for Mathematical Modeling - Human Health and Disease (COMMAND) is to develop mathematical models to enhance understanding of human health and diseases. The methodology of mathematical modeling of human health and diseases is capable of improve diagnosis and treatments for the benefit of patients and society.

The interdisciplinary approach of mathematical modeling may elucidate the unseen and make the otherwise inaccessible accessible. We briefly denote this “the mathematical microscope”. We extract scientific insight into bio-medical mechanisms of health and diseases based on biological knowledge and data and use such insight to promote the development of digital tools for personalized diagnoses and therapy. Combining personalized data with mechanism based mathematical models may refines diagnoses, show benefits of early intervention, make timely therapies more effective, lead to new robust patient specific treatments, and result in individual treatment forecast for the benefit of patients and the health care system.

The insight gained by such interdisciplinary approach will generate solid theoretical foundation for quantitative biomedicine in accordance with experimental findings - on which future research and clinical procedures will be anchored.

Specifically, we have gained expert knowledge on mathematical modeling of several diseases in collaborating with medical doctors. Examples include: cancer development and cancer treatment strategies, e.g. for myeloproliferative neoplasms and their coupling to the immune system, where we have proven benefits of early intervention and have suggested data-driven improved combination treatments; the cardiovascular system and its regulation in relation to diseases such as heart failure, syncope, neuropathy, hypertension, we have developed hypotheses for developing POTS, and we have gain understanding of the intercranial pressure curve for severe head injured patients refining diagnoses and suggest individual treatment; diabetes type 1 and 2, where we have proposed a cure, which has subsequently been verified on mice; endocrine physiology especially the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis we have pin pointed pathologies involved in stress and mental diseases; and developed models for flexible multi-pass dialysis methods versus conventional single-pass methods, which are immobile and thus inappropriate e.g. for traveling. Central for all these activities are the development and application of identification and parameter estimation for the complex dynamical systems considered.