ENISI MSM: A novel multi-scale modeling platform for computational immunology

Abstract

Biological systems span several orders of magnitude in space and time from intracellular pathways to tissue-level processes. Many studies focus on molecular level events while other studies focus on cellular level and tissue level interactions. The immune system is highly complex and dynamic, encompassing hierarchical interactions with dimensions ranging from nanometers to meters and time scales from nanoseconds to years. To comprehensively model immunological processes computationally, multi-scale models are needed. However, the lack of multi-scale modeling tools can be a deterrent to advance the understanding of the immune system across scales. In this paper, we developed an object-oriented multi-scale modeling (MSM) platform, ENISI MSM, that integrates agent-based modeling (ABM), ordinary-differential equations (ODE), and partial differential equations (PDE) models. To our best knowledge, this is the first such multi-scale modeling platform that is capable of integrating ODE, PDE, and ABM models together. The tool is developed in Java and is object-oriented. For example, the agents are objects and the ODE and PDE solvers are also objects. ENISI MSM also provides user-friendly interfaces and visualizations. We developed a multi-scale CD4+ T cell differentiation model in the context of gut inflammatory and showed the effectiveness of ENISI MSM.