Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) initiatives

1. German Research Ministry (BMBF) funded project on the systems biology of lung cancer. The major aim is to better understand the early metastasis formation and invasion of lung cancer, including therapeutical options. Data on all levels ranging from intracellular up to organ level will be used to establish successively an integrated multiscale model of cellular and migration decisions in lung cancer. A particular focus will be on dissecting how cellular organisation and communication in spheroid cultures and co-cultures of lung cancer cell lines with selected endothelial cells affects information processing and the proliferation and migration decisions downstream. To reveal the inhomogeneous spatio-temporal organisation in these tumour growth models, specific probes for medical imaging, quantify extracellular cytokine concentrations will be used, and the effects of pharmacological inhibitors be monitored. By data and model integration, parameters should be identified that critically determine early spread and facilitate to predict possibilities for improved therapeutic options. The project coordinator is Ursula Klingmueller, German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), Heidelberg (http://www.lungsys.de/ )

2. German Research Ministry (BMBF) funded project on the systems biology of liver (Virtual Liver Network). The aim of the VLN project is to set up multiscale models of liver. The Virtual Liver will be a dynamic model that represents, rather than fully replicates, human liver physiology morphology and function, integrating quantitive data from all levels of organisation. Our part ranges from the intracellular up to the level of groups of liver lobules. A liver lobule is the basic repetitive functional unit of liver. Applications are explained in the text available on the web site. The networks has 69 Principle Investigators organised in about 10 work packages, each of which have a number of sub-projects (http://www.virtual-liver.de/ ).

Participation In other International Programs

Participation in the EuroMed3+3 governed by Inria. The M3CD network (https://www.rocq.inria.fr/bang/M3CD_website/ ), coordinated by J. Clairambault, has continued and extended its activities, giving rise to new participations: Politecnico di Torino (M. Delitala), Universidad de Valladolid (Ó. Angulo), to stays of students (Y. Bourfia) and researchers (M. Adimy) and to the organisation of a new workshop in Marrakesh in January 2014. The mid-term report is available on the website. The University of Tlemcen (T. Touaoula) has joined in from January 2015.