Title:
A mathematial foundation for PathSim, a rule-based spatial model of immune response to viral pathogens
Speaker:
Reinhard Laubenbacher, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech
Subject:
Disease Models: Host-Pathogen Interactions
Area:
Medicine
Type of school:
university
School name:
ohio state university
Country:
United States
Course language:
English
Course media:
Video
Course duration:
Contributor:
pbp
Comments:
Author: Reinhard Laubenbacher, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech
Title: A mathematial foundation for PathSim, a rule-based spatial model of immune response to viral pathogens.
Presentation Materials: AVI PPT
Streaming Video: Real Media
The focus of this talk is a 3-dimensional, stochastic, rule-based model of immune response to viral pathogens. In its present form, the PathSim model focuses on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection of the Waldeyer's tonsilar ring. A multi-scale anatomical viewer helps to visualize infection model dynamics. Rule-based models are well-suited for the simulation of dynamics resulting from a large number of spatially distributed, interacting entities, such as virions and immune cells. One of their shortcomings, however, is the relative lack of mathematical tools available to analyze model dynamics and, in particular, to formulate and solve optimal control problems.
We will describe a research program to develop a mathematical foundation for PathSim. It's goal is to approximate the stochastic simulation by a deterministic model, represented as a discrete dynamical system over a finite field. Optimal control of such systems has been studied in several engineering contexts and is also applicable here. As an illustration, we discuss an optimal control theory problem for polynomial systems in the context of in vitro virus competition.
pbp