Dr Reiko Tanaka

The body is essentially a system with a large number of control mechanisms regulating it.  When we are in a healthy state we don’t always acknowledge these regulations. But when a disease occurs and things begin to go wrong it’s critical that we understand how these systems operate.  

To achieve a good understanding of these regulatory mechanisms and why some fail in relation to certain illnesses, we build computational models based on knowledge about the specific illnesses. We then use these models to do in-silico experiments and in-silico clinical trials by which we try to help understand the pathogenesis of diseases, who will benefit most from treatments, and who should use certain treatments.

2. What impact could your research have for our industry partners?

Ideally these computational tools can reduce the cost of drug development because they allow us to simulate the trials or experiments digitally before they take place in reality.  Therefore, the tools can be used to identify which experiments or which clinical trials should be prioritised and under which conditions they should be conducted.

3. What is interesting you most about your field at the moment?

I specifically work on atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema) and fungal infection in the lung.  With many new immunotherapy treatments becoming available, research in the area is moving very quickly. Our research in “Systems Dermatology” and “Systems micology” could help to connect different data and knowledge to achieve a system-level understanding of the pathogenesis. The power of the systems approach, to develop an effective mathematical model by combining multi-scale knowledge and high-dimensional data and to use it for in silico investigation, is being more and more appreciated.

It feels like we are really in the right place at the right time.