The current need to understand the consequences of the administration of a specific molecule to a given organism is a major issue for pharmaceutical and toxicological research. It is not difficult to realize, when the effects are observable, that there is a relationship between the dose of a xenobiotic and its effects. The difficulty in predicting such effects comes mainly from the fact that a large number of complex mechanisms are involved, from the entry of the molecule in the body to its excretion. To understand and quantify this relationship it is necessary to know the main biological mechanisms involved and to propose corresponding mathematical models. Pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and systems biology are the scientific fields most appropriate to meet this need. The first examines the fate of xenobiotics in the body and the second, the evolution of their effects. Systems biology is a relatively new approach which combines different levels of information (experimental data, chemical and biological knowledge, assumptions, etc) with mathematical models to understand how complex biological systems work. Our work shows that the use of systems biology is not easy and still lacks maturity. The amount of data and parameters to manage is typically huge. For a model taking into account only one signaling pathway, several months were needed for its calibration. This length of time is largely due to computation time required for parameter estimates, but also to the time required for harvesting and processing of diverse data (PK data omics, physiological, cellular, etc.) It is important that data collection protocol be defined in common by all the teams involved.
Systems biology tools and concepts for predictive modelling of toxicity