The pathophysiology of the burn patient manifests the full spectrum of the complexity of the inflammatory response. In the acute phase, inflammation may have negative effects via capillary leak, the propagation of inhalation injury, and development of multiple organ failure. Attempts to mediate these processes remain a central subject of burn care research. Conversely, inflammation is a necessary prologue and component in the later stage processes of wound healing. Despite the volume of information concerning the cellular and molecular processes involved in inflammation, there exists a significant gap between the knowledge of mechanistic pathophysiology and the development of effective clinical therapeutic regimens. Translational systems biology (TSB) is the application of dynamic mathematical modeling and certain engineering principles to biological systems to integrate mechanism with phenomenon and, importantly, to revise clinical practice. This study will review the existing applications of TSB in the areas of inflammation and wound healing, relate them to specific areas of interest to the burn community, and present an integrated framework that links TSB with traditional burn research.
BURNS, BIOCOMPLEXITY, AND THE NEED FOR A TRANSLATIONAL METHODOLOGYThe burn community held its State of the Science meeting (Sponsored by the American Burn Association, the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Shriners Hospitals for Children, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Command) from October 26-29, 2006, in order to determine the areas and foci of the community's research emphasis for the decade to come. These areas were defined primarily by their clinical manifestations or situations, such as resuscitation issues, inhalation injury, multiple organ failure, and wound healing. However, discussions invariably included references to the investigation of means by which known or suspected cellular and molecular pathophysiologic mechanisms could be translated into effective clinical treatments. These discussions included both the process of discovery for new