A Mesoscopic Approach to Modeling Immunological Memory
Y ongle Liu7 and Heather J. Ruskin7
| (7) |
School of Computer Applications, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland |
Abstract
In recent years, the study of immune response behaviour through mathematical and computational models has been the focus of
considerable efforts. We propose a mesoscopic model to combine the most useful features of the microscopic and macroscopic
approaches, which have been the alternatives to date. Cellular automata and Monte Carlo simulation are used to describe the
humoral and T-cell mediated immune response, where the nature of the response induced depends on the polarization of TH1 and TH2 cells. Memory immunity is introduced to our model, so that we can simulate primary and secondary immune response. The high
affinity between memory B-cells and antibodies contributes to a quick and intense response to repeated infection. The experiments
on PaffB--AB and PaffMB--AB, which control antibody production, explore the different roles of B-cell and memory B-cell in immune response stages. The
duration of immunological memory is also studied.
Keywords Cellular automata - Monte Carlo - Humoral - T-cell mediated - Immune response - Immunisation - Mesoscopic
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