Towards a unified approach in the modeling of fibrosis: A review with research perspectives

•Physiological and pathological fibrosis.•Biomathematics, bioinformatics, biomechanics and biophysics modeling.•Top-down and bottom-up approaches.•ODE-based models and Agent-based models.•Thermostatted kinetic theory and theory of finite elasticity.

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.