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UPMC receives NIH contract to create virtual immune system

Physician Practice Advisor, December 14, 2005

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $9.1 million contract to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) for the development of a virtual immune system to determine how the body responds to infectious agents, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

By using mathematical representations to reveal how the body, lungs, and individual cells respond to pathogens such as influenza, tuberculosis, and smallpox, the immune system computer model may lead to improved treatments or speed development of vaccines, according Timothy Gondre-Lewis, one of two project officers with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

The modeling center at UPMC will focus on the lung and draw on existing collaborations with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan. Researchers at two other immune modeling centers, Duke University and the University of Rochester, will focus on the immune response at the cellular level, while researchers at the fourth modeling center, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will look at the immune response of the body as a whole.

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