Client Focussed Demonstration of Immune and Inflammatory Simulations

Overview

Improved treatments for autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases enable better disease management, often with reduced care costs. A major problem for drug companies, however, is the high rate of attrition of pipeline products, particularly through late discovery of problematic side-effects or lack of efficacy. In a project carried out under the auspices of a pre start-up enterprise, Immune Modelling Solutions (IMS), a novel computer simulation technology has been developed that can capture the complexity of human disease and model therapeutic interventions.

The IMS platform can rationalise the design of clinical trials, highlight key biomarkers, abstract between animal and human physiology and assist decision making during the drug development process to identify potential drug targets, and optimise treatments and concert mixing of therapeutics. These are all key areas of interest for SMEs, pharmaceutical companies and academics working to translate mechanistic science into clinical products.

This project worked towards progressing the technology and business infrastructure to successfully deliver the product. If successful, the adoption of this technology could potentially save the pharmaceutical industry billions of pounds each year and significantly advance UK competitiveness in the drug development process.

Since the project was completed a new spin-out company SimOmics has been launched.

Press Releases

• From lab to marketplace: York spin-out business aims to improve efficiency of drug development
  (22 October 2014)
• Rising to the latest technology challenges in animal research
  (31 January 2014)
• University of York spin-out business to aid drug development 
  (28 January 2014)

Outputs

Grants

• Paul Kaye, NC3Rs, CRACK IT Challenge 16: Virtual Infectious Disease Research, £100,000
• Jon Timmis, Royal Academy of Engineering, Enterprise Fellowship, £80,000
• Mark Coles, University of York Research Innovation Office, Funding to support continued development of tool chain, £10,000

Publications

• Read, M. N., Andrews, P. S., Timmis, J., Williams, R. A., Greaves, R. B., Sheng, H., Coles, M. C., & Kumar, V. (2013). Determining Disease Intervention Strategies Using Spatially Resolved Simulations. PloS one, 8(11), [e80506]doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080506