Friday, Oct. 1, PSA 104

Guanyu Wang,
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.


 Title:
    Modeling thymocyte development and immunopathogenesis


    Abstract:
    T-lymphocyte (T-cell) development constitutes one of the basic and
  most vital processes in immunology. The process is profoundly affected
  by  the thymic microenvironment, the dysregulation of which may be the pathogenesis
  or the etiology of some diseases. On the basis of a general conceptual
  framework, we have designed the first biophysical model to describe
  thymocyte development. The microclimate within the thymus, which is shaped
  by various cytokines, is first conceptualized into a growth field and a
  differentiation field, under the influence of which the thymocytes mature.
  A  partial differential equation is used to model the flow of
  thymocytes. The evolution of the two fields are estimated by two
  methods:
  the first relies on the quasi-steady state approximation and requires
  the  slow-varying of the two fields; the second method is not subject
  to this restriction, it accurately reconstructs the entire fields (in
  both   dimensions of time and maturity) by the conventional Gauss-Newton
  parameter  optimization method. Further works will be addressed.