Section: New Results

Modelling of Erythroblastic Islands (red blood cell production)

The production of red blood cells, erythropoiesis, occurs in the bone marrow, where immature erythroid cells differentiate and produce red blood cells. Differentiation and maturation of immature red blood cells occurs in very specific spatial structures called erythroblastic islands. They consists of a macrophage (big white blood cell) surrounded by immature cells and providing them with survival factors. Using a hybrid model, made of a discrete model describing cell-cell interactions and accounting for spatial interactions, and a continuous model describing intracellular protein regulation (deciding for cell fate), we showed the importance of the central macrophage in the erythroblastic island, in order to prevent unstable islands leading either to cell populations extinction or excessive proliferation. This result is actually under review (Journal of Theoretical Biology), partial results have been already published (Math. Model. Nat. Phenom.)