Center for Inflammation and Regeneration Modeling (CIRM)

Advancing medicine today.

The Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling employs a systems approach — a means for understanding complex biological processes as a whole

The Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling was established to address the need for a unified, systems framework to tackle the complexity of the inflammatory response — in the setting of regenerative medicine and beyond.

CIRM is headed by Yoram Vodovotz, PhD, director (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Surgery) and Gilles Clermont, MD, MSc, medical director (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Critical Care Medicine).
View CIRM Organizational Chart

Integral parts of CIRM include its three cores: Modeling, Educational, and Data Analysis. This framework is designed to train interdisciplinary scientists in the emerging discipline of inflammation modeling, to characterize several scenarios of relevance to regenerative medicine, and to identify new therapeutic approaches.

A new paradigm

By employing high-throughput technologies, “systems biology” has emerged as a new paradigm that allows the study of large portions of physiological networks simultaneously, using genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic biomarker profiling to understand the behavior of the system as a whole. These approaches must be coupled with mathematical modeling of complex systems in order to tame the seemingly unpredictable behavior of such biological phenomena and to account for the plethora of known and unknown interactions among biologic pathways. Only then can we control and possibly harness the inflammatory process for the purpose of regenerative medicine.

Initial efforts in the field of inflammation modeling

The CIRM team includes clinicians, biologists, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists engaged in a multidisciplinary effort to solve the puzzle of acute inflammation and organ failure in
the setting of trauma and sepsis.

This team is carrying out an iterative program of model generation, verification, and calibration in both animals and humans, and subsequent hypothesis generation and testing in the setting of acute inflammation. Investigators have also incorporated mechanistic models of wound healing to create preliminary mathematical models of inflammation, organ damage and dysfunction, and wound healing.

Goals of the Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling

CIRM has set three primary goals:

  • To bring to bear on the problem of acute and chronic inflammation interdisciplinary input and enthusiasm of clinicians, bench scientists, and modelers, from both research institutions and companies.

  • To facilitate the design of regenerative medicine approaches by elucidating the underlying inflammatory processes and the inflammatory impact of various therapies.

  • To understand and harness the intrinsic regenerative power of the human body by modeling not only specific organs but also the inflammatory communication network that binds them together.

These goals are accomplished by:

  • Recruiting modelers from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and industry to address practical clinical problems.

  • Creating a vast repository of relevant patient-centered and research data, including high-density physiologic measurements, gene/protein data, imaging data, clinical process/therapeutic data, and administrative and demographic data, as well as tools to mine these data in a way that is immediately relevant to modelers.

  • Creating an interdisciplinary educational curriculum for a new generation of scientists studying the biology of inflammation.

  • Creating opportunities for partnerships with industry commercialization of novel therapeutics.

Share the commitment

The Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling is a new initiative, but its base institutions, affiliations, facilities, and talent pool are well established and substantial. We have a long-term interest in the mission of CIRM, and we invite other professionals who share our commitment to join us in this dynamic, interdisciplinary enterprise.

CIRM faculty

Shared Models and Simulations

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