The Virtual Liver Network: systems understanding from bench to bedside

Adriano Henney speaks to Hannah Coaker, Commissioning Editor. After achieving a PhD in medicine and spending many years in academic research in the field of cardiovascular disease, Adriano Henney was recruited by Zeneca Pharmaceuticals from a British Heart Foundation Senior Fellowship, where he led the exploration of new therapeutic approaches in atherosclerosis, specifically focusing on his research interests in vascular biology. Following the merger with Astra to form AstraZeneca, Henney became responsible for exploring strategic improvements to the company's approaches to pharmaceutical target identification and the reduction of attrition in early development, directing projects across research sites and across functional project teams in the USA, Sweden and the UK. This resulted in the creation of a new multidisciplinary department that focused on pathway mapping, modeling and simulation and supporting projects across research and development, which evolved into the establishment of the practice of systems biology within the company. Here, projects prototyped the application of mechanistic disease-modeling approaches in order to support the discovery of innovative new medicines, such as Iressa®. Since leaving AstraZeneca, Henney has continued his interest in systems biology, synthetic biology and systems medicine through his company, Obsidian Biomedical Consulting Ltd. He now directs a major €50 million German national flagship program – the Virtual Liver Network – which is currently the largest systems biology program in Europe.