Fig. 2: Highlighting the power of mechanistic mathematical modelling.
From: Exploiting in silico modelling to enhance translation of liver cell therapies from bench to bedside
a Biological schematic showing the parameterised elements of the HCV kinetic model used to generate the mechanistic equations. Infected hepatocytes (target cells), virus concentration (HCV RNA), hepatocyte number when therapy begins (assumed to be constant due to their slow turnover during homoeostasis/treatment duration), hepatocyte infection rate, and viral production rate (in the absence of treatment) were all parameterised for. By separately incorporating reduced hepatocyte infection and reduced viral production rates and using collected data on patient viral loads in the model, they elucidated that IFN-α acts by reducing the viral production rate (rather than hepatocyte infection rate). Orange polyhedral cells represent healthy hepatocytes, green polyhedral cells represent HCV-infected hepatocytes, grey polyhedral cells represent dead hepatocytes. b Representative graph of the biphasic HCV decline trend seen from the patient sample data during interferon treatment, which underpins the model. c Simplified schematic demonstrating key parameters incorporated into the mathematical model of magnetic cell targeting. Inset depicts the combined actions of magnetic force and fluid drag acting on magnetic particle-labelled cells flowing through the system.
