Welcome to the Regenerative Medicine Research Center (RMRC) at the Faculty of Medicine of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran. The RMRC was established in 2014 to discover novel drug targets for complex disorders, with a specific focus on chronic kidney disease, and to integrate and intensify research and education activities related to Systems Biology at the university.
One of our mission is to apply a systematic approach to biological studies by leveraging omics data as one of the primary tools of systems biology. Analyzing and integrating different types of omics data and extracting valuable insights from high-throughput data are our primary interests (Borhani et al, 2022).
The current challenges in computational systems biology require new insights from Control Engineering and Computer Science. Our team, on one side, focuses on constructing drug-target identification (Abedi et al, 2022) and drug-target interaction prediction (Borhani et al, 2022) algorithms and tools. On the other side, we also focus on constructing large-scale dynamic models, which are more foreseeable for understanding biological systems' behavior (Borzou et al, 2023).
The majority of scientific knowledge has been gathered through classical biology approaches in original papers. How we can gather specific field papers under one umbrella to elicit latent knowledge? Constructing disease maps is the current answer, and we have started a collaboration with the disease map consortium (DMC), Luxemburg, Luxemburg, and the City of Hope research center, CA, USA, to construct the Diabetic Kidney Disease Map (DKDM).
Our other interest includes finding the roles of polyploid cells as the main drivers of tissue regeneration and cancer progression through stepwise efforts. Through our studies, we have discovered that these cells not only contribute to tumor development but also play a crucial role in normal tissue regeneration by promoting cell differentiation and tissue repair. We believe that identifying commonalities between the mechanisms driving polyploid cells' roles in tissue regeneration and cancer progression may offer new insights into developing therapies that can target polyploid cells in cancer (Moein et al, 2021). Also, one of our studies shows the potential of zoledronic acid to eliminate cancer polyploid cells by targeting their increased metabolism (Adibi et al, 2023).
We also aim to provide a challenging, multidisciplinary working environment for talented students as the next generation of scientists who will adopt a systems biology approach as their mindset. We train individuals who value collegiality and teamwork and who work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.
We are eager to conduct national and international collaborations to take part in our role in the scientific community.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested in collaborating with us.
