Poland has announced the Gaia AI Factory in the southern city of Kraków, a supercomputing hub that officials say will support research on “digital twins,” detailed computer models that realistically simulate natural processes.
The center is being created at the Academic Computer Center Cyfronet AGH, with teams from Jagiellonian University’s Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology and Sano – Centre for Computational Personalized Medicine among the first users.
The project was unveiled on October 10 by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Ministry of Digital Affairs.
Researchers plan two main model types. One will simulate the human gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms living in the intestines. The other will model environmental microbiomes.
“The greatest challenge is not building supercomputers, but designing them to solve real problems. Our task here is to create digital twins,” said Paweł Łabaj of the Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology.
Scientists say the models could predict how a body responds to treatments, including medications or lifestyle changes, and could speed up drug development by testing ideas virtually.
“This may be a breakthrough, because it enables individualized therapies tailored to a specific person,” Łabaj said.
The gut microbiome is central to the Kraków work. Studies have shown that certain bacteria can influence the success of therapies.
In one example cited by Łabaj, a cancer drug worked well in cell and animal tests, but failed in some patients who harbored a particular gut bacterium.
The microbe produced a metabolite that inactivated the drug. After doctors removed the bacterium with antibiotics, the treatment began to work.
Backed by the new infrastructure, researchers aim to study such mechanisms much earlier in the design of therapies.
They say the approach could shorten clinical research, improve patient safety and health outcomes, and help industry bring better products to market.
In the future, teams plan to build models for groups of people, then personalize them with data from an individual. That could guide precise choices on foods or supplements and, in cases of severe dysbiosis (a disrupted microbiome), set a step-by-step plan for prebiotic and probiotic use.
According to the project partners, recent advances in computing power and the availability of high-quality datasets now make realistic simulation of complex systems like the microbiome possible.
Data to train the models will come from academic projects and from private companies that profile microbiomes for clients.
The ministries said the Gaia AI Factory will serve scientists, businesses, and public administration.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP