[Anna Niarakis]

 
Anna Niarakis and Reinhard Laubenbacher – Introduction to the Working Group: 5 minutes
Anna Niarakis – Presentation of the WG’s planned activities and member contributions: 10 minutes 
Q& A session: 5 minutes 
Invited speakers:

Liesbet Geris  – Biomechanics Research Unit, GIGA In Silico Medicine, University of Liège, Belgium – Executive director VPH Institute – 10 minutes presentation

Gary An – Green and Gold Professor of Trauma and Critical Care, Vice Chair of Surgical Research, Department of Surgery, University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine – 10 minutes presentation

Jasmin Fisher  – UCL Cancer Institute, University College London, UK – 10 minutes presentation

James Glazier,  Director, Biocomplexity Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington – 10 minutes presentation

Q&A session: 10 minutes
Moderated round table discussion:  challenges and realistic outputs: 20 minutes
 

Additional links to informative material
https://www.institut-pascal.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/scientific-pro…
https://indico.ijclab.in2p3.fr/event/9017/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00610-z
Building an international and interdisciplinary community to develop immune digital twins for complex human pathologies (zenodo.org)
 

Applicable Pathways
Life Science Data Issues

Brief introduction describing the activities and scope of the group
Digital twins, customized simulation models pioneered in industry, are beginning to gain ground in medicine and healthcare, with some major successes in cardiovascular diagnostics and insulin pump control. Personalized computational models are also assisting in applications ranging from drug development to patient-tailored treatment optimization. Advanced medical digital twins will be essential to making personalized medicine a reality. Because the immune system plays an important role in such a wide range of diseases and health conditions, from fighting pathogens to autoimmune disorders, digital twins of the immune system (IDTs) will have an especially high impact. However, their development presents major challenges, stemming from the inherent complexity of the immune system and the difficulty of measuring many aspects of a patient’s immune state in vivo. A collaborative interdisciplinary effort involving immunologists, clinicians, mathematical modelers, and software engineers is required to achieve substantial progress. 
The WG Building Immune Digital Twins aims to foster a network of collaborators and experts in all relevant areas of research. The ultimate goal of the WG is to help create a long-term interdisciplinary immune digital twin community, willing to take up the challenges of this exciting new field. 
Within the 18-month timeframe, we will deliver clear outcomes that can be enlisted here: 

We aim to create an open-access catalog and repository of existing models and set the groundwork for developing technology that enables models to be integrated, re-used, adapted, or expanded to serve the purpose of building Immune Digital Twins across scales. A catalog and repository of selected relevant literature will also be built.

All the relevant information regarding the project, as well as the model/data and literature catalogs, will be available on a dedicated webpage. 

We also aim to write a recommendation for building IDTs, leveraging the vast experience and expertise of our community members. 

We will also develop a second edition of the Building Immune Digital Twins Workshop to strengthen the community started on the first edition, expand it, and brainstorm technical solutions for the challenges we are addressing. 

We want to form a diverse network of stakeholders (e.g., epidemiologists, clinicians, patient associations, NGOs, companies, etc.) that can help maximize the applicability of future IDTs and discuss key challenges in developing, implementing, and enhancing the usage and acceptance of IDTs.

Group chair serving as contact person
Anna Niarakis

I Understand a Chair Must be Present at the Event to Hold the Breakout Session
Yes

Meeting objectives
The meeting is intended to provide a discussion forum to brainstorm and exchange on all the scientific aspects of building and validating immune system models for different purposes. We will discuss use cases, the state of the art, and important milestones of an IDT roadmap, highlighting its scientific, technical, and organizational challenges. 
The panel and participants will try to answer the following questions: 

What is (are) the clinical goal(s) of a specific IDT? 

What are the scientific and mathematical challenges to be addressed? 

What is the composition of a team to carry out the project? 

What are the resources needed?   

What can we do to accelerate development of the IDTs? 

Please indicate at least (3) three breakout slots that would suit your meeting.
Breakout 11, Breakout 14, Breakout 17

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