Aims of the Integrative Biology Project

Approximately 60% of the UK population will die from either heart disease or cancer. Computer simulation of the function of whole organs based on molecular and cellular level models offers the potential to increase understanding of the causes of these conditions and eventually to develop new treatment regimes and drugs to reduce their threat to life.

The main aim of the Integrative Biology project is to realise this potential by developing multi-scale models of the heart and cancer tumours spanning the range from genes to whole organs and by enabling the coordinated use of supercomputing resources to run simulations of these models with a spatial and temporal resolution not practically possible before the e-Science Programme.

The long term goal motivating the project is development of an underpinning theory of biology and biological function capable of sufficiently accurate computational analysis that it produces clinically useful results.

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© Integrative Biology 2006