Dr Himanshu Kaul - Leicester University

Research Fellowships 2020

Respiratory diseases remain a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Precision medicine represents a potentially powerful treatment approach, but for uptake at a clinical scale requires a systems level understanding of mechanisms underpinning respiratory diseases. Computer-based modelling can help overcome this barrier but requires approaches that can couple disease mechanisms across biological scales (gene, cell, tissue, organ) and effective clinical validation strategies.

Dr Himanshu Kaul’s research at the University of Leicester is addressing these challenges by engineering and clinically validating the Lung Pharmacome: an in silico lung capable of capturing personalised lung physiology and pharmacology. This underlying approach entails three complementary work packages.

First, my lab is developing a novel digital framework that allows them to link gene networks with cell interactions and tissue/organ function. This framework will enable simulations that will help them track how aberrant gene interactions influences tissue/organ performance by mediating cell activity.

Second, they are pioneering lung organoids created using patient-derived cells to test the mechanistic insights generated by the Lung Pharmacome.

Last, they are working with clinical partners to validate the Lung Pharmacome by creating digital twins of asthma patients, simulating therapeutic interventions on each digital patient, and comparing patient-specific predictions against clinical trial data. This is enabling them to rapidly translate novel insights generated from the computer models to clinical settings.

These research outcomes will have a positive societal impact because they will radically change the way we understand and manage asthma. This will allow clinicians to tailor therapies to the patient’s specific disease profile and enable pharmaceutical companies to engineer effective drugs by targeting mechanisms responsible for respiratory diseases. This will reduce the costs associated with treatment, number of in-patient bed days, and lost productivity.

Personal website

LinkedIn: Himanshu Kaul - Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow - University of Leicester

Twitter