Non-fiction: Digital human twins on the rise
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EU invests 80 million Euros in human-based technologies
At the end of 2023, the European Commission launched the Virtual Human Twins (VHT) initiative. The aim is to create digital replicas of actual people to support research and development. Such virtual twins could, for example, be used to design personalised medical treatments and test the effects of drugs without endangering real people or animals. In the long term, this could lead to significant advances in precision medicine and improve the efficiency of clinical trials.
The fact that this technology is regarded as more than promising and extremely important is also made clear by the figures with which this initiative will be supported. This includes various work programs in 2023 and 2024: The EU is providing 80 million Euros through Horizon Europe (the EU framework program for research and innovation, running from 2021 to 2027) - for multi-scale computer models of patient pathophysiology in the context of personalised disease management. To set up a digital platform, 24 million Euros through the Digital Europe Program (DIGITAL) is available. The same program will invest a further 5 million Euros in a European digital infrastructure that converts data from intensive care units into computer models, as well as 20 million Euros for the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) for measures for comprehensive stroke treatment with predictive computer models, integrated patient health data and improved visualisation. Another goal is an ongoing support by individual EU member states.
EDITH (Ecosystem Digital Twins in Healthcare) is one of these programmes in which researchers from all over Europe are jointly developing a roadmap that demonstrates how the development process can be successful, starting from data from individual organ systems to a multi-organ whole-body twin. In addition, existing digital twin initiatives have to be networked in order to bundle data volumes and improve the safety and efficacy of the concept.
These programmes are important steps on the way to personalised medicine, i.e. concerning the individual patient. They are as well highly relevant for clinical trials for new drugs, for example, since ideally a large amount of human data could be extracted from the projects. Another important potential application would be preclinical studies, which are still mainly carried out by using animals. Due to species differences, these animal data are the main reason for the high failure rate of new drugs (over 90%) and therefore actually hinders the development of effective therapies. The new methods such as organoids and multi-organ chips are used in particular by pharmaceutical companies because they offer better predictability of the potential human reaction to a substance. These companies also emphasise the advantages of reducing costs and gaining results more quickly through the use of these NAMs (non-animal methods). Digital solutions such as digital twins provide an important and valuable add-on here.
There are three advantages to investing in these new, promising methods: biomedicine becomes safer, faster and cheaper. In Germany, 99% of research funding is invested in animal-based projects, although it would be much better spent in these "new" scientific areas such as organoid and AI/digital technologies. Animal testing was not successful in increasing the drug success rate of just 5-7 percent in the last two decades - on the contrary, it has fallen in recent years.
Europe is leading the way - now Germany must follow the example if it does not want to miss out on modern, effective research and development. This would also be an important incentive to keep the top researchers of the present and future in the country.