Guest Editorial Special Issue on “Edge-Based Wireless Communications Technologies to Counter Communicable Infectious Diseases”

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in one of the major challenges for humanity in the 21st century. The impact of these challenges has led to a tremendous loss of life, impact on long-term health, well-being as well as personal psychology, and negative societal changes and not to mention its impact on the global economy. Since this is a health issue, similar to other forms of diseases and pandemics, society has largely relied on the fields of medical, virology, immunology, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical science to develop novel therapeutic solutions for treatments. This has resulted in vaccines that have been rolled out to elevate immunity levels that will hopefully allow the majority of the population to reach herd immunity. However, given the technological advancements that we have reached in the 21st century, questions have also risen as to how other disciplines can play a role in solving and obtaining new knowledge of communicable disease pandemics.

Molecular Communications in Viral Infections Research: Modeling, Experimental Data, and Future Directions.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are affected by viral infections each year, and yet, several of them neither have vaccines nor effective treatment during and post-infection. This challenge has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, showing how viruses can quickly spread and impact society as a whole. Novel interdisciplinary techniques must emerge to provide forward-looking strategies to combat viral infections, as well as possible future pandemics. In the past decade, an interdisciplinary area involving bioengineering, nanotechnology and information and communication technology (ICT) has been developed, known as Molecular Communications. This new emerging area uses elements of classical communication systems to molecular signalling and communication found inside and outside biological systems, characterizing the signalling processes between cells and viruses. In this paper, we provide an extensive and detailed discussion on how molecular communications can be integrated into the viral infectious diseases research, and how possible treatment and vaccines can be developed considering molecules as information carriers. We provide a literature review on molecular communications models for viral infection (intra-body and extra-body), a deep analysis on their effects on immune response, how experimental can be used by the molecular communications community, as well as open issues and future directions.