Speaker: Prof. Tomáš Koutný
University of West Bohemia
December 10, 2025 | 11:00 am
DEIB, Alpha Room (Bld. 24)
Via Golgi, 40
Contact: Elisabetta Di Nitto
Abstract
On December 10, 2025, at 11:00 am the seminar on "Metabolic Simulations for Diabetes - Recent Advances, Current Challenges and Future (Quantum?) Possibilities" will take place in DEIB, Alpha Room (Building 24).In-silico simulation is an established approach in the medical research to reduce adverse effects of medical experiments and clinical trials, while also reducing the associated monetary costs. For instance, there are many metabolic impairments associated with a particular type of Diabetes, on which the researcher can focus.
The same applies to a construction of an auxiliary device, e.g., the insulin pump that’s acting as an artificial pancreas. In both cases, there is a need for a metabolic model of a patient with diabetes, to produce a realistic output for given inputs (carbohydrates, protein, fat, physical activity, drugs....). Constructing such a model is rather non-trivial and it results to fairly complex problems, for which we need to have a computationally reasonable representation. One of the recent, important advances is a metabolic language that enables a seamless cooperation between an engineer and a physician. Then, a patient can be fitted 1:1 and simulated within a virtual metabolic machine. But the question is, how do we determine the patient parameters to obtain a precise digital twin? Classical computer is one choice. The other, hopefully, could be a quantum computer. Hence, this lecture will describe the current state of the art of metabolic simulation up to looking into the future, to envision opportunities for quantum metabolic computing.