Amrinder Singh

Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig her! The doctoral thesis!  Prøveforelesningen over oppgitt emne:  Explaining artificial intelligence: Overall aims for human health and decoding biological complexity. Prøveforelesning holdes kl. 10.15, og kan strømmes her!  Disputasen starter kl. 12.15, og strømmes her!   Auditoriet er åpent for publikum. Disputasen strømmes og et opptak vil være tilgjengelig i et døgn. The auditorium is open to the public. The defense will still be streamed, and a recording of the disputation will be available for 24 hours.

Populærvitenskapelig sammendrag av avhandlingen:

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex disorder that involves chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. IBD has mainly two subtypes, Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). IBD affects around 6.8 million globally, and < 1.3 million people in Europe. IBD can be devastating, resulting in significantly reduced quality of life.
There are multiple factors, such as genetics, environmental factors, microbiome, and immune system that cause IBD; but the molecular mechanisms behind IBD are still elusive. A significant proportion of patient fails to respond to therapy. Therefore, it is important to identify non-responders to standard therapy, so alternative treatments can be applied sooner.

In this work, a biological interpretable quantitative model was developed that predicts therapy response in UC patients. This model characterizes the individuals based on how strongly they respond to their immune systems' alarm signals. These signals are interpreted through a complex network of protein molecules that determine how cells respond. We propose a mathematical model of how these networks process signals differently in each individual and relate this to which drugs patients respond to.

Hovedveileder
Førsteamanuensis Endre Anderssen, Institutt for klinisk medisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.

Biveiledere
Professor Ruth H Paulssen, Institutt for klinisk medisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet. 

Bedømmelseskomité
Associated Professor Jan Koster, Amsterdam University Medical Center  - 1. opponent.
Professor Walter Fries, University of Messina - 2. opponent.
Ph.d. Therese Haugdahl Nøst, Institutt for samfunnsmedisin, UiT Norges arktiske universitet – leder av komité.

Disputasleder:
Professor Jacob Odeberg, Institutt for klinisk medisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.