Insights about our bodies gleaned from years of modelling are set to be translated into clinical practice, in a major new effort that could bring us closer to personalised medicine.

In what’s been dubbed the “12 Labours” project, University of Auckland researchers will build off a sprawling international effort to create a complete virtual physiological human.

The project has just received a $15m from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) – one of the largest research grants ever awarded to the university.

Distinguished Professor Peter Hunter, of the university’s Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), saw a need to take a more mathematical and quantitative approach to healthcare.

“A lot of medical strategies completely ignore physics,” he said.

“Yet complex structures like human physiology can be described mathematically, and can be analysed mathematically, using a biophysically based understanding of human physiology.”

Accurate diagnosis of a medical condition often required data from medical images, physiological tests, blood biomarkers and genetic tests.

“Linking those together requires quantitative tools based on multi-scale physiological models.”

Founded by Hunter and colleague Professor Bruce Smaill 20 years ago, the ABI has been leading cutting-edge work to model parts of the body such as the brain, and our cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems.

That’s been carried out through the global, ABI-led Physiome Project, which has been building a digital blueprint combining our mathematical understanding of human biology at every level – from cells and genes to organs.

The 12 Labours Project – named after the body’s 12 organs, as well as the dozen tasks that mythology’s Hercules had to complete to attain immortality – will take this work much further.

At its core will be three “exemplar” projects – focused on pulmonary hypertension, upper limb rehabilitation and the control of organ function by the autonomic nervous system – to show how sophisticated modelling can be translated to healthcare.

Once the technology platforms have been completed, they’ll be developed into diagnostic and therapeutic strategies targeted at other organs and clinical procedures.

Hunter ultimately hoped to see the work enable a more “patient-centric” assessment of health status than was currently possible.

“It’s about enabling clinicians to make more rational decisions, introducing the power of predictive modelling, and all the knowledge of physiological function that we have encapsulated in our models over 20 years.”

When it came to bioengineering’s importance to clinical practice, he compared the human body to an aeroplane.

“We get on an aeroplane, knowing that the chance of a crash is tiny, because we trust the engineering processes behind it, scrutinising the plane, maintaining the engine, correcting things before they go wrong, making sure we are kept safe,” he said.

“Why should we not demand that for our own bodies? The problem is that medicine has largely ignored 100 years of advances in engineering physics.

“So this is about trying to bring engineering disciplines and physics, together with physiology, into the interpretation of the human biological system.

“Sure, the biological system is complex, but so is an Airbus.”

MBIE’s science, innovation and international general manager, Dr Peter Crabtree, added the project would see Kiwi scientists working with some of the world’s top institutes.

Among them: Germany’s University of Stuttgart, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation and the University of Freiburg, along with Oxford, Harvard and Stanford universities.

“New Zealand has excellent bioengineering research leaders and science entrepreneurs, and we are proud to be supporting our local researchers’ contribution to addressing a major global science challenge,” Crabtree said.

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