title: Towards a unified approach in the modeling of fibrosis: A review with research perspectives.
abstract: Pathological fibrosis is the result of a failure in the wound healing process. The comprehension and the related modeling of the different mechanisms that trigger fibrosis are a challenge of many researchers that work in the field of medicine and biology. The modern scientific analysis of a phenomenon generally consists of three major approaches: theoretical, experimental, and computational. Different theoretical tools coming from mathematics and physics have been proposed for the modeling of the physiological and pathological fibrosis. However a complete framework is missing and the development of a general theory is required. This review aims at finding a unified approach in the modeling of fibrosis diseases that takes into account the different phenomena occurring at each level: molecular, cellular and tissue. Specifically by means of a critical analysis of the different models that have been proposed in the mathematical, computational and physical biology, from molecular to tissue scales, a multiscale approach is proposed, an approach that has been strongly recommended by top level biologists in the past decades.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Université Paris Diderot Sorbonne Paris-Cité, Sorbonne Universités UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France; Institut Universitaire de Cancérologie, Faculté de médecine, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, 91 Bd de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France. Electronic address: benamar@lps.ens.fr.
authors.forename: Martine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ben Amar
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Université Paris Diderot Sorbonne Paris-Cité, Sorbonne Universités UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France; Institut Universitaire de Cancérologie, Faculté de médecine, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, 91 Bd de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France. Electronic address: bianca@lps.ens.fr.
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bianca
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D006801:Humans; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D010825:Physics; D012106:Research
keywords: Agents; Complexity; Kinetic theory; Multiscale; ODE and PDE; Therapeutics; Wound healing