CAG Center for Endotheliomics

Center for Endotheliomics

The Center for Endotheliomics’ ambition is that research in Eastern Denmark lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of critically ill patients in need of intensive care patient who enter hospitals with either trauma, cardiac arrest or severe sepsis. For this patient group, survival is counted in hours, and up to half of the patients die within 72 hours – often as a result of organ failure.

Organ failure – or multi-organ failure – is when the organs stop functioning, which happens to the most critically ill patients in intensive care. However, whether the patient develops organ failure is largely determined by the endothelium, which is the cell layer that lines the inside of all blood vessels. How the individual patient’s endothelium reacts to shock, trauma, sepsis or cardiac arrest determines how severe organ failure the patient will develop – and thus the patient’s risk of death.

Mathematical model reconstructs the cell’s metabolism

The CAG brings together clinical experts in trauma, sepsis and cardiac arrest with experts in systems biology, biotechnology and bioinformatics. Together we will generate new knowledge about critical illness and multi-organ failure.

We have developed a method based on mathematical computer models that reconstructs the metabolism of the endothelial cell and thus its function (phenotype).

These models use metabolites in the patient’s blood plasma as well as genetic variations in the patient’s DNA to predict the condition of the endothelial cell. In this way, we can better understand how the individual patient’s endothelial cells respond to acute critical illness with shock.

The aim of the CAG is to exploit the new knowledge about the importance of endothelial cells for multi-organ failure and with mathematical modeling and systems biology understand the difference between the endothelial response in acute critical illness in surviving patients and in those who die. When we succeed, we can intervene and adjust the endothelium in time before the patient develops organ failure.

Center for Endotheliomics introduces a novel research field focusing on the microvascular endothelium at the systemic level and that the individual patient’s cellular response (ENDOTYPES) to critical illness is pre-determined and differ between patients also with the same disease explaining the observed differences in outcome.

Center for Endotheliomics aim to improve our understanding of how the patients ENDOTYPE affects development of multiorgan dysfunction syndrome (MODS) when challenged with acute critical illness and to translate this novel knowledge in to improved diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities.

Center for Endotheliomics introduces genome scale metabolic models as the scaffold for multi-omics data integration and computational modeling as tools to decipher the pathophysiology responsible for MODS development and progression clinically. Additionally, supervised machine learning algorithms will be applied to data from electronic patient records, Danish registries and clinical databases of these critically ill patients to characterize the clinical disease trajectories resulting from the individual patients ENDOTYPE, thereby, laying the foundation for novel patient stratifications and therapeutic interventions.

Our research projects

CAG Center for Endotheliomics has collaborators nationally and around the world.

CAG chairmanship

CAG key-members

CAG Staff Members

Science

Funding and strategy

Research infrastructure

Laboratory Technologists

Clinical trials

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