Critical transitions – predicting when diseases arise

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Monique Becker

Diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases do not develop overnight. The body changes slowly, unnoticed, unwatched until – suddenly – the symptoms arise. This process can sometimes take years. We research the causes of this slow development and the ultimate transition to find effective therapeutic approaches. Only then will we be able to progress from treating the symptoms to finally curing these diseases at their cause.

Looking for similarities

In science, such processes are called critical transitions. Whether at the onset of an epileptic seizure, a heart attack or a stock market crash, researchers can observe similar patterns at the start of such catastrophic shifts. The level of organisation inside a system increases significantly at first and then drops at a critical moment. At the LCSB, we study common mechanisms and shared properties between the different complex systems. We have dedicated one of our Doctoral Training Units to the topic of critical transitions, combining experimental and computational approaches. The aim is to predict when a disease will start and to determine early warning signals to prevent it.

Landscape of critical state transition
Landscape of critical state transitions.

LCSB in transition

Transitions also define the LCSB and its environment. The LCSB in the next ten years will not be the same LCSB it was in the past decade. In the start-up phase and the early years, the LCSB was small and familiar. Now the institute has grown to almost 250 employees. And transition happen also beyond the LCSB, in the research landscape of Luxembourg. The LCSB has been a driving force in this landscape over the past ten years. We have been enablers and have helped shape the scientific culture in the country. Now, things are changing: all the different players are collaborating much more intensively. A team is assembling, a team that together makes Luxembourg more visible internationally.

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Health-to-disease transition: when a systems is switching from one state to another.

Critical transitions - predicting when diseases arise


Diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases do not develop overnight. The body changes slowly, unnoticed, unwatched until – suddenly – the symptoms arise. This process can sometimes take years. We research the causes of this slow development and the ultimate transition to find effective therapeutic approaches. Only then will we be able to progress from treating the symptoms to finally curing these diseases at their cause.
Landscape of critical state transition
Landscape of critical state transitions.

Looking for similarities

In science, such processes are called critical transitions. Whether at the onset of an epileptic seizure, a heart attack or a stock market crash, researchers can observe similar patterns at the start of such catastrophic shifts. The level of organisation inside a system increases significantly at first and then drops at a critical moment. At the LCSB, we study common mechanisms and shared properties between the different complex systems. We have dedicated one of our Doctoral Training Units to the topic of critical transitions, combining experimental and computational approaches. The aim is to predict when a disease will start and to determine early warning signals to prevent it.

Image
Health-to-disease transition: when a systems is switching from one state to another.

LCSB in transition

Transitions also define the LCSB and its environment. The LCSB in the next ten years will not be the same LCSB it was in the past decade. In the start-up phase and the early years, the LCSB was small and familiar. Now the institute has grown to almost 250 employees. And transition happen also beyond the LCSB, in the research landscape of Luxembourg. The LCSB has been a driving force in this landscape over the past ten years. We have been enablers and have helped shape the scientific culture in the country. Now, things are changing: all the different players are collaborating much more intensively. A team is assembling, a team that together makes Luxembourg more visible internationally.

2009: The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) starts from scratch. Prof. Rudi Balling, newly appointed as director, is given a carte blanche to create an interdisciplinary centre within the University of Luxembourg that will focus on biomedical research.

2014: Five years later,The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is a fully established research centre with 14 research groups from the fields of computer science, mathematics, engineering, biology and medicine.