Laboratory for

Multiscale Emergent Bioengineering

Improving personalised interventions targeting chronic respiratory diseases

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Our Mission

At Kaul Lab, we develop computational, experimental, and analytical platform technologies to improve personalised interventions targeting chronic respiratory diseases.

Lung Disease is a Socioeconomic Problem

  • Affects 1 in 5 people in the UK alone
  • Responsible for 1 death every 5 minutes
  • Costs the economy 11 billion pounds a year

The Opportunity

Precision Medicine is a promising strategy to tackle lung diseases. However, reliable and standardised delivery of precision medicine requires a systems-level understanding of the underlying pathology, often at the individual patient level.

In the context of lung diseases, this means that we need to understand how pathological gene interactions (subcellular-level) lead to poor lung function (organ-level). There is no framework currently to link these scales.

Thus, the mechanisms responsible for the emergence of these diseases, particularly at the individual level, remain elusive. The lab’s overarching goal is to develop novel platform technologies to bridge this crucial gap.

Our Approach

We integrate cell culture methods, patient explant cultures, and clinical trial data with computational models to understand how pathological gene activity leads to lung diseases.  We specifically focus on Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Lab expertise

Multiscale modelling

Integrate mathematical approaches of different classes to develop computational models that link phenomena across multiple scales of space and time

Engineering organoids

Engineer airway organoids and use them to validate predictions made by the multiscale computational models

Quantitative biology

Use imaging, flow-cytometry, and sequencing to evaluate organoid performance and validate computationally-derived predictions  

Digital patients

Create digital patients by entering relevant patient features in the multiscale computational model to understand pathogenesis at the individual level

Digital trials

Conduct in silico clinical trials on digital patients (and control subjects) and compare outcome against real clinical trials

Research motifs

Multiscale dynamics of asthma pathophysiology

Integrate mathematical approaches of different classes to develop computational models that link phenomena across multiple scales of space and time

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Linking multiscale processes to create the virtual patient

The projects aims to create digital patient avatars using patient details to make clinically relevant, patient-specific predictions to help tailor therapies based on the patients' profile

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Patient-specific airway organoids

Develop a protocol for airway organoids using patient-derived cells. The organoids will help test hypotheses generated by the multiscale model

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Conducting digital clinical trials

The project aims to simulate virtual clinical trials with virtual patients generated above and comparing simulation output against actual clinical trial data

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Join our team

Kaul lab comprises motivated individuals who are committed to contributing to an equitable society through our science and actions.

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Kaul Lab acknowledges funding support from