Å. Flobak, John Zobolas, Miguel Vazquez, T. S. Steigedal, L. Thommesen, Asle Grislingås, B. Niederdorfer, Evelina Folkesson, Martin Kuiper
{"title":"Fine tuning a logical model of cancer cells to predict drug synergies: combining manual curation and automated parameterization","authors":"Å. Flobak, John Zobolas, Miguel Vazquez, T. S. Steigedal, L. Thommesen, Asle Grislingås, B. Niederdorfer, Evelina Folkesson, Martin Kuiper","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1252961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1252961","url":null,"abstract":"Treatment with combinations of drugs carries great promise for personalized therapy for a variety of diseases. We have previously shown that synergistic combinations of cancer signaling inhibitors can be identified based on a logical framework, by manual model definition. We now demonstrate how automated adjustments of model topology and logic equations both can greatly reduce the workload traditionally associated with logical model optimization. Our methodology allows the exploration of larger model ensembles that all obey a set of observations, while being less restrained for parts of the model where parameterization is not guided by biological data. We benchmark the synergy prediction performance of our logical models in a dataset of 153 targeted drug combinations. We show that well-performing manual models faithfully represent measured biomarker data and that their performance can be outmatched by automated parameterization using a genetic algorithm. Whereas the predictive performance of a curated model is strongly affected by simulated curation errors, data-guided deletion of a small subset of regulatory model edges can significantly improve prediction quality. With correct topology we find evidence of some tolerance to simulated errors in the biomarker calibration data, yet performance decreases with reduced data quality. Moreover, we show that predictive logical models are valuable for proposing mechanisms underpinning observed synergies. With our framework we predict the synergy of joint inhibition of PI3K and TAK1, and further substantiate this prediction with observations in cancer cell cultures and in xenograft experiments.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"172 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139256806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: Virtual patients and digital twins in the systems analysis of drug discovery and development","authors":"Chen Zhao, Hua He, Huilin Ma","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1293076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1293076","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139334720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: Systems biology, women in science 2021/22: translational systems biology and in silico trials","authors":"Jane A. Leopold, M. Ganapathiraju, N. Yanamala","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1293298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1293298","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139334084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Federico Reali, Attila Csikász-Nagy, Gianluca Selvaggio
{"title":"Editorial: Use of quantitative systems pharmacology pipelines to bridge in vitro and in vivo results in drug discovery","authors":"Federico Reali, Attila Csikász-Nagy, Gianluca Selvaggio","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1291610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1291610","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139337538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sonia Mecacci, Lucía Torregrosa-Barragán, Enrique Asin-Garcia, Robert W. Smith
{"title":"Multilayered safety framework for living diagnostics in the colon","authors":"Sonia Mecacci, Lucía Torregrosa-Barragán, Enrique Asin-Garcia, Robert W. Smith","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1240040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1240040","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Colorectal cancer is the second most deadly cancer worldwide. Current screening methods have low detection rates and frequently provide false positive results, leading to missed diagnoses or unnecessary colonoscopies. To tackle this issue, the Wageningen UR iGEM team from 2022 developed “Colourectal”, a living diagnostic tool for colorectal cancer. Following a synthetic biology approach, the project used an engineered Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 strain capable of binding to tumour cells that detects two distinct cancer biomarkers, and secretes a coloured protein observable in stool. Due to the utilization of genetically modified bacteria in vivo , precautionary biosafety measures were included within a three level safe-by-design strategy. Results: The first genetic safeguard ensured confinement of the living diagnostic to the colon environment by implementing auxotrophy to mucin that is abundant in the colon lining. For this, a synthetic chimeric receptor was generated to ensure expression of essential genes in the presence of mucin. The second strategy limited the viability of the engineered bacteria to the human body, preventing proliferation in open environments. The use of a temperature sensitive kill switch induced bacterial cell death at temperatures below 37°C. The third biocontainment strategy was installed as an emergency kill switch to stop the Colourectal test at any point. By inducing a highly genotoxic response through CRISPR-Cas-mediated DNA degradation, cell death of E. coli Nissle is triggered. Discussion: While the use of engineered microorganisms in human applications is not yet a reality, the safety considerations of our multi-layered strategy provide a framework for the development of future living diagnostic tools.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136061096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eberhard O. Voit, Ashti M. Shah, Daniel Olivença, Yoram Vodovotz
{"title":"What’s next for computational systems biology?","authors":"Eberhard O. Voit, Ashti M. Shah, Daniel Olivença, Yoram Vodovotz","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1250228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1250228","url":null,"abstract":"Largely unknown just a few decades ago, computational systems biology is now a central methodology for biological and medical research. This amazing ascent raises the question of what the community should do next. The article outlines our personal vision for the future of computational systems biology, suggesting the need to address both mindsets and methodologies. We present this vision by focusing on current and anticipated research goals, the development of strong computational tools, likely prominent applications, education of the next-generation of scientists, and outreach to the public. In our opinion, two classes of broad research goals have emerged in recent years and will guide future efforts. The first goal targets computational models of increasing size and complexity, aimed at solving emerging health-related challenges, such as realistic whole-cell and organ models, disease simulators and digital twins, in silico clinical trials, and clinically translational applications in the context of therapeutic drug development. Such large models will also lead us toward solutions to pressing issues in agriculture and environmental sustainability, including sufficient food availability and life in changing habitats. The second goal is a deep understanding of the essence of system designs and strategies with which nature solves problems. This understanding will help us explain observed biological structures and guide forays into synthetic biological systems. Regarding effective methodologies, we suggest efforts toward automated data pipelines from raw biomedical data all the way to spatiotemporal mechanistic model. These will be supported by dynamic methods of statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and streamlined strategies of dynamic model design, striking a fine balance between modeling realistic complexity and abstracted simplicity. Finally, we suggest the need for a concerted, community-wide emphasis on effective education in systems biology, implemented as a combination of formal instruction and hands-on mentoring. The educational efforts should furthermore be extended toward the public through books, blogs, social media, and interactive networking opportunities, with the ultimate goal of training in state-of-the-art technology while recapturing the lost art of synthesis.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"156 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135063687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Systems biology platform for efficient development and translation of multitargeted therapeutics","authors":"Karim Azer, Irina Leaf","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1229532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1229532","url":null,"abstract":"Failure to achieve efficacy is among the top, if not the most common reason for clinical trial failures. While there may be many underlying contributors to these failures, selecting the right mechanistic hypothesis, the right dose, or the right patient population are the main culprits. Systems biology is an inter-disciplinary field at the intersection of biology and mathematics that has the growing potential to increase probability of success in clinical trials, delivering a data-driven matching of the right mechanism to the right patient, at the right dose. Moreover, as part of successful selection of targets for a therapeutic area, systems biology is a prime approach to development of combination therapies to combating complex diseases, where single targets have failed to achieve sufficient efficacy in the clinic. Systems biology approaches have become increasingly powerful with the progress in molecular and computational methods and represent a novel innovative tool to tackle the complex mechanisms of human disease biology, linking it to clinical phenotypes and optimizing multiple steps of drug discovery and development. With increasing ability of probing biology at a cellular and organ level with omics technologies, systems biology is here to stay and is positioned to be one of the key pillars of drug discovery and development, predicting and advancing the best therapies that can be combined together for an optimal pharmacological effect in the clinic. Here we describe a systems biology platform with a stepwise approach that starts with characterization of the key pathways contributing to the Mechanism of Disease (MOD) and is followed by identification, design, optimization, and translation into the clinic of the best therapies that are able to reverse disease-related pathological mechanisms through one or multiple Mechanisms of Action (MOA).","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135207808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sara Sommariva, S. Berra, Giorgia Biddau, G. Caviglia, F. Benvenuto, Michele Piana
{"title":"In-silico modelling of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway in colorectal cancer: mutations and targeted therapy","authors":"Sara Sommariva, S. Berra, Giorgia Biddau, G. Caviglia, F. Benvenuto, Michele Piana","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1207898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1207898","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Chemical reaction networks (CRNs) are powerful tools for describing the complex nature of cancer’s onset, progression, and therapy. The main reason for their effectiveness is in the fact that these networks can be rather naturally encoded as a dynamical system whose asymptotic solution mimics the proteins' concentration profile at equilibrium.Methods and Results: This paper relies on a complex CRN previously designed for modeling colorectal cells in their G1-S transition phase and presents a mathematical method to investigate global and local effects triggered on the network by partial and complete mutations occurring mainly in its mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. Further, this same approach allowed the in-silico modeling and dosage of a multi-target therapeutic intervention that utilizes MAPK as its molecular target.Discussion: Overall the results shown in this paper demonstrate how the proposed approach can be exploited as a tool for the in-silico comparison and evaluation of different targeted therapies. Future effort will be devoted to refine the model so to incorporate more biologically sound partial mutations and drug combinations.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45941414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A microbiota-epigenetic circuit controls systematic circadian programs in the gut epithelium","authors":"Junjie Ma, Jianglin Zhang, Zheng Kuang","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1175306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1175306","url":null,"abstract":"The intestinal microbiota is an important factor that regulates mammalian circadian rhythms and health. We previously reported that the microbiota synchronizes lipid uptake and metabolism in the intestinal epithelium through histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3). However, the breadth and significance of microbiota-circadian crosstalk in the intestine are not well understood. Here, we show that the gut microbiota programs the rhythmic expression of a broad range of biological processes, and temporally orchestrates epithelial functions and physiology in accordance with the rhythmic gut environment. Protein synthesis, cell proliferation, and metabolic and immune activities are differentially expressed in the daytime and nighttime respectively, indicating a daily alternation of “working” and “recharging” themes in the gut. The rhythms of gene expression are dampened or altered in germ-free mice, suggesting that the microbiota helps to structure the timing of host gene expression. Further analysis showed that HDAC3 drives a vast majority of these microbiota-dependent circadian programs, likely through rhythmic deacetylation of histones. Motif enrichment analysis revealed that HDAC3 could differentially control distinct rhythmic pathways, most likely by recruiting different transcription factors. These findings provide a systematic view of how the commensal microbiota exploits an epigenetic factor to program just-in-time functions in the intestinal epithelium and maintain host homeostasis.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44848785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Generating synthetic multidimensional molecular time series data for machine learning: considerations","authors":"G. An, Chase Cockrell","doi":"10.3389/fsysb.2023.1188009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2023.1188009","url":null,"abstract":"The use of synthetic data is recognized as a crucial step in the development of neural network-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. While the methods for generating synthetic data for AI applications in other domains have a role in certain biomedical AI systems, primarily related to image processing, there is a critical gap in the generation of time series data for AI tasks where it is necessary to know how the system works. This is most pronounced in the ability to generate synthetic multi-dimensional molecular time series data (subsequently referred to as synthetic mediator trajectories or SMTs); this is the type of data that underpins research into biomarkers and mediator signatures for forecasting various diseases and is an essential component of the drug development pipeline. We argue the insufficiency of statistical and data-centric machine learning (ML) means of generating this type of synthetic data is due to a combination of factors: perpetual data sparsity due to the Curse of Dimensionality, the inapplicability of the Central Limit Theorem in terms of making assumptions about the statistical distributions of this type of data, and the inability to use ab initio simulations due to the state of perpetual epistemic incompleteness in cellular/molecular biology. Alternatively, we present a rationale for using complex multi-scale mechanism-based simulation models, constructed and operated on to account for perpetual epistemic incompleteness and the need to provide maximal expansiveness in concordance with the Maximal Entropy Principle. These procedures provide for the generation of SMT that minimizes the known shortcomings associated with neural network AI systems, namely overfitting and lack of generalizability. The generation of synthetic data that accounts for the identified factors of multi-dimensional time series data is an essential capability for the development of mediator-biomarker based AI forecasting systems, and therapeutic control development and optimization.","PeriodicalId":73109,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in systems biology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43775027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}