Funding Number:	01ZX1508
Budget:	1.242.321 EUR
Funding Period:	2016 - 2023
Project Leader:	Dr. Frank Kramer
Funding provider:	Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

In clinical research, both the integration of prior knowledge about biological signaling pathways and the reproduction of these pathways in scientific publications is a very inefficient and cumbersome process. The aim of this junior research group is to simplify the integration of signaling pathway knowledge. In addition, reproducibility in clinical research in general and in systems medicine in particular is to be improved. The central idea is the definition and implementation of a multi-layered modeling structure for biological signaling networks, which provides a generic and extensible format for the integration of different signaling network types and other sources of relevant knowledge (e.g. drug target databases).The special feature of this modeling structure is that it contains procedures for the automatic transformation of signal networks and can document these reproducibly. The aim of this project is to develop a multi-layer modeling structure for biological signaling networks. This includes the theoretical elaboration of the definition and the implementation of the model for practical application.In addition to an independent implementation of the software, the extension of widely used software tools by means of plug-ins or software packages to support this multi-layer modeling structure for biological signaling networks is planned.This will improve interoperability within the scientific community and enable easy adoption of the structures by other researchers.To evaluate these pathway models, existing knowledge sources will be compiled in an online catalog of models.Furthermore, in cooperation with the clinical partners, specific models will be created and functionally analyzed using cohort data on colorectal carcinomas and metastatic tumors.