Roles of balanced positive and negative feedbacks in inflammatory and infectious diseases Event

Homeostasis in biological systems is often attained as a result of a subtle balance between positive and negative feedbacks, and their unbalance may lead to disease conditions. Our group aims to understand essential pathological mechanisms of inflammatory and infectious disease, such as atopic eczema (acute/chronic skin inflammation with defective skin barrier) and bacterial/fungal infection in the respiratory systems, from a viewpoint of control engineering. We develop ODE-based mathematical models to understand the role of epithelial barrier in determining the disease state, identify essential control mechanisms responsible for different pathological symptoms, and evaluate the effects of possible drug treatments. Our model analysis suggests the critical roles of the dual controls for barrier homeostasis, which is a key for the onset/remission of disease.