Project Overview

The Virtual Physiological Rat Project is focused on the systems biology of cardiovascular disease—understanding how disease phenotypes apparent at the whole-organism scale emerge from molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, and organ-system interactions. Ongoing studies are particularly focused on the inexorable link between cardiac and peripheral physiology/pathophysiology in hypertensive heart disease, aiming to understanding how disease phenotypes apparent at the whole-organism scale emerge from molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, and organ-system interactions. Our overall scientific goals are to: (1.) use a systems approach to construct and test new hypotheses on cause-and-effect relationships in the etiology of hypertension and hypertensive heart disease; (2.) discover new strategies for managing, treating, and reversing disease mechanisms and improving/restoring intrinsic cardiac function, neurohumoral control of cardiac function, and physiological blood flow and pressure control; and (3.) use systems modeling to improve diagnosis and realize applications in precision medicine for cardiovascular disease.

Research Highlights

DLAC schematics
Filip Ježek, Svitlana Strunina, Brian E Carlson, Jiří Hozman
The International Journal of Artificial Organs, 2019
Neal ML, Gennari JH, Cook DL
CEUR Workshop Proc. 2016 Aug;1747. pii: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1747/IT604_ICBO2016.pdf
Kosinski SA, Carlson BE, Hummel SL, Brook RD, Beard DA
Journal of Applied Physiology
Moxley MA, Vinnakota KC, Bazil JN, Qi NR, Beard DA
PLoS Comput Biol. 2018 Feb 23;14(2):e1005982
Dewan S, McCabe KJ, Regnier M, McCulloch AD, Lindert S
J. Phys. Chem. B, Article ASAP, 2016.

Participating Labs

Auckland Bioengineering Institute
Cardiac Mechanics Research Group
NC State University
NTNU - Trondheim Norwegian University of Science and Technology
RGD - Rat Genome Database
Medical College of Wisconsin
Physiome Project
University of Wisconsin