Computer models could fight diseases by associating patients with "digital twins"

One study suggests that advanced computer models could improve the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases by connecting patients to a "digital twin".

The technology could be used to better tailor medications to each patient by computer-testing thousands of drugs on different types of cells before the start of treatment.

Currently, drugs can be ineffective in many patients with common diseases because they are rarely caused by a single problem or fault.

Instead, they depend on complex relationships between thousands of genes belonging to many different cell types and may differ from one patient to another.

"Our goal is to develop these models into" digital twins "of individual patient diseases in order to tailor medications to each patient," said Senior Professor Mikael Benson, of Linkoping University in Sweden.

He added: "Ideally, each twin will be matched and treated with thousands of drugs, before choosing the best medicine to treat the patient."

Computer disease models are published in the open access journal Genome Medicine.

The methods for constructing them have been perfected using a mouse model of human rheumatoid arthritis.

Scientists have used the single-cell RNA sequencing technique to badyze gene activity in thousands of diseased mouse cell joints using network badyzes.

After finding the most important cell type, it has been numerically badociated with thousands of drugs, which means that optimal drugs could then be used to treat and cure mice, the researchers said.

The study also showed that it was possible to use computer models for diagnosis in humans.

By badyzing T-cells of patients with 13 diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, the researchers found that it was possible to distinguish most diseases from each other, as well as patients of people in good health.

"As T-cells work as a kind of spy satellite that constantly monitors the body to detect and fight diseases as early as possible, it may be possible to use this type of cells for the early diagnosis of many different diseases, "said Professor Benson. .

The study is based on the collaboration of an international team of researchers in Sweden, the United States, Korea and Spain.

It has received funding from the EU, National Institutes of Health and the Swedish Cancer Society.