Systems Biomedicine

Dear Colleagues,

The term “systems biomedicine”, defined as the study of dynamic systems of the human body as a multiscale integrated whole, is used to distinguish from the term “systems biology”, which primarily focuses on the application of dynamic systems theory and network analysis to molecular biology. Many recent advances in the systems biology field have been made in the past decade. The systems biology quantitative methods for analyzing biological networks such as metabolic networks and cell signaling pathways have yielded a greater understanding of relationships between genetic information and cellular function. However, a gap still exists in tying these genetic and cellular effects to clinically observable properties. As the translational counterpart to systems biology, systems biomedicine seeks to bridge this gap between molecular and cellular systems analysis and clinical medicine. Applying approaches from process systems engineering to mathematically describe the physical and chemical processes that occur in biomedical applications across multiple scales allows for testing of proposed mechanisms for physiological functions or disease progression by simulating complex interdependent interactions that cannot be decoupled easily in experiments. Dynamic behaviors and macroscopically observable properties may emerge from the collective behavior of many cells or interactions between populations of cells and tissues that cannot be explained simply by studying the isolated parts. In this Special Issue we encourage manuscripts that utilize and create process systems engineering tools and experimental or computational/mathematial models to make clinically-relevant predictions of physiological functions and to incorporate interactions between medical therapies and healthy and diseased tissues.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Development of new tools to facilitiate single- or multi-scale modeling of biomedical systems
• Design of validated experimental (animal, 3D tissue mimic, microfluidic, etc.) or computational/mathematical models of physiological and pathophysiological tissues and/or organ systems for biomedical applications
• Prediction and analysis of physiological or pathophysiological phenomena
• Optimization of schedules of medical interventions or therapies

Dr. Ashlee N. Ford Versypt
Dr. Belinda S. Akpa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Processes is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.