Design and strategy for the Cardionome Project

Area of Science:

• Physiology
• Computational Biology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• The Physiome Project seeks a comprehensive quantitative description of integrated organism functions.
• Developing such a large-scale project requires foundational databases for genomic, biochemical, anatomical, and physiological information.
• A focused initiative, the Cardiome Project, is proposed to describe the functioning heart.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a multicenter collaborative effort to describe the functioning heart at the organ level.
• To build an anatomically detailed cardiac model incorporating excitation-contraction spread.
• To augment the cardiac model with regional blood flow, metabolism, and energy dynamics.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a central scheme based on the work of Hunter, Noble, and others for cardiac modeling.
• Integrating data on regional blood flows, substrate uptake, metabolism, and energy production/utilization.
• Employing a component-based assembly approach, minimizing and then augmenting linkages to refine the model.

Main Results:

• Development of a foundational cardiac model describing excitation and contraction spread.
• Inclusion of physiological parameters such as blood flow, metabolism, and ionic balance.
• Establishment of a framework for future integration of cellular regulation and intervention responses.

Conclusions:

• The Cardiome Project offers a pragmatic approach to understanding heart function through a detailed organ-level model.
• Collaborative efforts and integrated databases are crucial for advancing complex physiological research.
• The project provides a scalable framework for progressively enhancing the accuracy and scope of cardiac function description.