Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine

We are currently witnessing a revolution in genomic medicine. Based on deep sequencing technologies, mass spec proteome and metabolome analysis and the availability of data aquisition, storage and retrieval in the „Peta-Byte“ dimension, complex biological systems can now be analysed on a genome wide systems level. It will not be long before genomic sequencing will become a commodity and an integral part of medical routine diagnostics and therapeutics. These developments will have a tremendous impact on our capability to dissect biological systems and as a result improve our understanding of the mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. This will in turn guide future drug design and enable the development of effective public health measures.

The LCSB: At the interface of experimental biology, medicine and mathematics.

The LCSB focuses on the analysis of biological mechanisms with a special emphasis on disease development. New biological targets for drug action will be identified and new tools will be developed to improve the predictability of the efficacy and toxicity of new drug candidates. Disease pathogenesis will be looked at in the context of complex biological network composition and behaviour and interpreted as perturbations in the homeostasis of physiological networks. Mathematical descriptions of such networks will be developed and used for the modelling and simulation of how diseases develop and how diseases are influenced by genetic predisposition or by external environmental parameters, such as drugs, nutrition and life style.

Of particular importance will be a research program in which the experimental analysis of biological systems across different scales is fully integrated with the development of new technologies, i.e. in the area of high-throughput screening devices, single-cell analysis or in the field of mathematical and computational tools. The LCSB will therefore form a highly interdisciplinary environment at the interface of biology, medicine and mathematics, combining biological experimentation with theoretical, mathematical and computational biology. A strategic partnership with the ISB in Seattle will play a major role, i.e. in the area of technology development, proteomics and in building close relationships with industrial partners.