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Newsletter Issue n. 6 - October 2020
Welcome back to the quarterly update on the Strituvad project! In the last few months we participated to many relevant events, most of them still online, we kept stressing the importance of the fight against TB, even more during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we concluded a consistent part of work related to the Bayesian statistical model design work package, coordinated by Prof Miguel A. Juárez from the University of Sheffield. The last deliverable submitted presents the Bayesian hierarchical models for the main endpoints of the clinical trial, i.e. proportion of patients with sputum culture negative, either when we focus on a single source of information or after combining both sources of in silico and in vivo data in an augmented clinical trial. It describes the key elements of the formal models and the implementation of the fitting algorithms. The basic implementation steps of both algorithms are summarised in their corresponding pseudo-code: single source and combination of information, along with an illustration to accessing and using the fitted models for inference. The full document is available on the publications page on our website.
Strituvad project manager Dott. Fichera presented the project and its achievements towards the fight against tuberculosis, while principal investigator Prof Pappalardo from the University of Catania... Keep Reading
Prof. Viceconti chaired a sessions on pathophysiology where also Prof. Pappalardo participated, providing examples of how in silico medicine can play a key role in the fight of epidemics like Tuberculosis and Covid.
The School has been held online and people connected from all over the world, including participants as far as Australia, for a full immersion in in silico medicine and its applications. Prof. Juarez and Prof. Pappalardo from the Strituvad consortium delivered lectures on Bayesian and Agent-based models using the experience with Strituvad as case study for the students.
MIMESIS, the University of Catania spin-off for the exploitation of UISS-TB
The start-up has been presented at the Open Innovation Workshop: opportunities for the Environment and Health on the 16th July 2020 in Catania, Italy. Within the event, the "Open Innovation Service Lab Platform" provided an acceleration tool for companies, start-ups, spin-offs, researchers, investors, clusters, associations, thus a great opportunity for visibility, promotion and business potential for MIMESIS. MIMESIS intends to provide the biomedical industry with the first generation of in silico solutions to significantly reduce the time and costs of drug research and development by pharmaceutical companies.
Other news
LAV (Anti-vivisection league) interviews Combine GROUP lead by Prof. Pappalardo on the perspective of an animal free research with the support of simulation platforms like UISS-TB (Italian only version)
GNS Healthcare announces the release of Gemini, the in silico patient for multiple myeloma. A highly accurate computer model of disease progression and drug response, Gemini simulates patient response to therapeutics at the individual level
A nucleotidyltransferase toxin inhibits growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis through inactivation of tRNA acceptor stems - Study identifies a previously unknown mechanism that expands the range of enzymatic activities used by bacterial toxins, uncovering a new way to block protein synthesis and potentially treat tuberculosis and other infections
Essential Components of a Public Health Tuberculosis Prevention, Control, and Elimination Program: Recommendations of the Advisory Council for the Elimination of Tuberculosis and the National Tuberculosis Controllers Association
Scalability support channel on InSilicoWorld community Thanks to the funding of the European Commission, the CompBioMed Centre of Excellence in Computational Biomedicine now offers free support to organisations in their initial steps towards improving the scalability of existing computational biomedicine applications and deploying them on high performance computing resources. Join the community
#DHealth4Trials, a forum on the use of digital health technology in regulatory trials The new channel on InSilicoWorld community will be channel will be a virtual space for discussion and exchange of good practices about the use of digital health technologies in regulatory clinical trials for the safety or efficacy evaluation of new drugs or new medical devices. Join the conversation
Upcoming Events
16-19 Dec. 2020, Seoul, S.Korea IEEE BIBM 2020 - 4th International Workshop on Computational Methods for the Immune System Function (CMISF 2020)
Focus on the application of computer methods and computational models for the modeling of the immune system function, along with their application in understanding the pathogenesis of specific diseases.