Mathematician on the future of medicine, digitized organs and the mysteries of the pharmacological giants

Portal.ru 66.ru journalists met with the leader of the development team working on the mathematical model of the heart.  

According to the medical section of the strategic plan for the development of Ekaterinburg, three problems increase the mortality rate in our city: injuries, cancer and heart diseases. Doctors claim that the most effective way to deal with the last two is through the prevention and prophylactic medical examination: the sooner they discover signs of a future disease, the higher the chances of a saving and prolonging a person’s life. 

Olga Solovyova, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, is busy finding the solution of this particular problem. For many years Dr. Solovyova and her colleagues have been developing a mathematical model that would help doctors predict heart problems and eliminate them before they actually become problems. 

The idea is simple: digitize the human heart, describe it with formulas and equations, enter the personal data of each person and build the most accurate forecast on what and when will “break” in their heart. And then treat the patient with pills before the problem manifests itself and leads to surgery. 

But realizing this idea is not that simple. Olga Solovyova told 66.ru about successes our scientists have already achieved and the work that lies ahead. Here are the excerpts from that conversation. 

"Heart formula" is, of course, a very beautiful, succinct definition. But it’s not true. It’s impossible to describe a living organ with one formula, especially the heart. This is a very complex structure, and we consider it at different levels of its organization - starting with the cellular level. We can describe the processes that occur in individual cells, in tissues, and ultimately we can model the work of the whole organ. All of this is done in the form of formulas and equations that are calculated on supercomputers. Taken together, this complex set of mathematical objects is the "heart formula". 

Almost all the failures that occur in the heart begin at the molecular level. If we know the "targets" of such failures and understand what cellular mechanisms are affected in this or that pathology, we can further develop the scenario and predict what it can lead to. Mathematical models of the heart have already reached such a high level of development that many people seriously suggest using them in clinics to build a model and predict scenarios of possible heart function failures according to the personalized data. This will allow us to detect weaknesses in advance, identify the problem in the early stages and solve it even before the person gets ill. 

But mathematical models of the heart aren’t used in everyday medicine. We still have a long way to go to implement the model so that it reliably reproduces the available personalized data. Currently, heart models are used only in pharmacological companies. They are used to minimize the risks of clinical trials of new drugs. That is, the medicine is "tested" on a supercomputer before being given to people. 

I have been working on this for a long time - scary to say, since the eighties. This is a very long process. First, it was necessary to obtain reliable experimental data that the models were built on. Second, we needed computer equipment. It had to reach a certain level of development in order to carry out the complicated calculations that we needed. 

In fact, the work on creating a mathematical model of the heart that is applicable in medical practice is a struggle for a breakthrough in science, medicine and pharmacology. We have many competitors, there are very strong groups in different countries. But this doesn’t mean that we hide from each other, hide all our achievements and are eager to become the first and only. It can’t happen in science. The result is more important. 

Scientific thought is arranged in such a way that different specialists from different countries work on the same project simultaneously, but they take on different blocks, different tasks. We don’t interfere with each other. We share our experience. We increase the amount of knowledge and accelerate the process. Another's experience is open information that is available in scientific publications. 

Everything is different in business. Manufacturers of medical equipment and pharmacological companies also use mathematical models of the heart. But they, unlike us scientists, don’t share their achievements so eagerly, although representatives of their research departments are present at all professional conferences. 

Somehow, corporations are not particularly interested in us. Firstly, because the pharmacological industry in Russia lags behind other countries. That’s why the owners of such companies still don’t understand the importance of mathematical modeling of physiological processes. Secondly, we need to solve a huge number of technical problems, so that our research can be brought to practical use.

This requires hiring a lot of programmers and covering huge material costs - there is no investor ready to take on such a project. 

Mathematical modeling of living organs is a whole field of science. Scientists have made particularly great advances in modeling bones. They already know how to predict surgeries. 

Brain models are also created. These models visualize the blood vessels, calculate blood pressure, find narrow places that can lead to ischemic problems. But no one tried to digitize the thought, the mind, and it’s unlikely anyone ever will. 

We divide a big project, let's call it "Creating a mathematical model of the heart", into many small stages. This is necessary in order to support our work financially. The rules of the programs of the Russian Academy of Sciences and foundations that are ready to support us are designed in such a way that the research shouldn’t last longer than three years, five years maximum. Of course, it’s simply impossible to create an applicable practical model in such a short time. 

We work only and exclusively at the expense of budgetary financing: funds are allocated by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ural Federal University, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the newly created Russian Science Foundation (RSCF). For example, RSCF appreciably supported our project aimed at developing personalized models in cardiology. But the results of our work are available to the whole world. We publish them. Nobody forbids us to do this. For now, in any case. 

Of course, private companies are interested in a working mathematical model of the heart. But I’m not sure that a scientist who patents it will become a fantastically rich man. I’d like to believe it. However, it won’t happen in the near future. And we are already not poor. 

I started working on the development of the heart model by accident. This is normal. A lot of things happen by pure chance in life. 

In science, love is the most important thing. A scientist simply can’t work if he genuinely doesn’t like the object of his research. Going to work and making calculations for eight hours every day takes dedication. There won’t be any scientific breakthroughs when there’s a lack of motivation. Breakthrough implies full immersion: your mind is constantly occupied with one question. It doesn’t leave you when you go home from work, it wakes you up at night, it constantly makes you look for answers. And every answer found leads to a dozen more questions. This is science. It’s the nature of it. There’s no other way. 

There are popular, trendy themes and fields in science, and it’s easy to find financing for them. We are lucky: mathematical modeling of physiology is one of the most popular topics in the world science. 

Original in Russian: Dmitry Shlykov, 66.ru