Section: New Results

Multiscale model of the CD8 T cell immune response

We presented in [43] the first multiscale model of CD8 T cell activation in a lymph node. We now described in [14] an update of this modeling approach. CD8 T cell dynamics are described using a cellular Potts model (hence cells are discrete interacting objects), whereas intracellular regulation is associated with a continuous system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. We focused our study on describing the role of Interleukin 2 (IL2) secretion. One major result was the demonstration of the full relevance of a bona fide multiscale description of the process: the observed (all or none) emergent behavior at the cell population scale could not have been straightforwardly deduced from the simple examination of (seemingly tenuous) differences in the cellular or molecular levels in separation.