Section: New Results

Mathematical model of hematopoiesis

We investigate in [5] a mathematical model of blood cell production in the bone marrow (hematopoiesis). The model describes both the evolution of primitive hematopoietic stem cells and the maturation of these cells as they differentiate to form the three kinds of progenitors and mature blood cells (red blood cells, white cells and platelets). The three types of progenitors and mature cells are coupled to each other via their common origin in primitive hematopoietic stem cells compartment. The resulting system is composed by eleven age-structured partial differential equations. To analyze this model, we don't take into account cell age-dependence of coefficients, that prevents a usual reduction of the structured system to an unstructured delay differential system. We study the existence of stationary solutions: trivial, axial and positive steady states. Then we give conditions for the local asymptotic stability of the trivial steady state and by using a Lyapunov function, we obtain a sufficient condition for its global asymptotic stability. In some particular cases, we analyze the local asymptotic stability of the positive steady state by using the characteristic equation. Finally, by numerical simulations, we illustrate our results and we show that a change in the duration of cell cycle can cause oscillations.