An ambitious venture to design a comprehensive computer model of the human body for use in medical research and drug development will be launched this week.
The 'virtual body' programme combines Physiome Sciences, a US company that has already modelled the heart on computer, with PA Consulting, a UK consultancy that simulates large-scale business systems.
The lessons learnt from complex business projects were directly applicable to modelling the way cells and organs work together in the body, said Ken Cooper, a dynamic modelling specialist with PA.
'What you have in the body is a complex hierarchy of time-controlled non-linear cause-effect feedback loops,' he said. 'These are the same things that go on in many business systems that we have modelled.'
The PA-Physiome scientists will first build a computer model of the immune system, the most complex part of the body after the brain and nervous system. PA will invest $10m (£6m) in the venture during this stage, which is expected to take about 18 months.
If the immune system simulation works, the scientists will go on to model the whole body - for which substantially more investment will be needed.
Physiome's existing computer heart simulates the workings of the real organ in immense detail. Its beats mimic the mechanical and electrical properties of heart muscle and blood, and its biochemistry reflects the reactions that take place in real cells.
Bill Scott, Physiome's chief executive, said the company was developing similar computer models of other organs but had been struggling to find the best way of linking them together in a dynamic simulation of the whole body. The very different systems expertise developed by PA would solve the problem, he said.
Copyright (C) The Financial Times Ltd, 1999
