Abstract
The greatest roadblock in vaccine design is the lack of a complete understanding of how the immune system works. Greater understanding can be achieved via mathematical models that formalize biological ideas and their ability to extract non-intuitive information from biological experiments. Rational vaccine design (RVD) aims to maximize the production of pathogen-specific memory cells following vaccination. First, the Herz model for viral dynamics was simulated using MATLAB to analyze the naïve system’s response to Ebola – a deadly hemorrhagic virus. The model was initialized for the unvaccinated system using biologically based data on Ebola virus cultivation in Vero cell-cultures. Simulations revealed generally non-quantified specifics of Ebola infection such as the virus’ birth, natural death, and cellular infection rates. The second system, initialized with the rates above, modeled Ebola infection in a vaccinated individual using a modified Herz model with equations for memory T-cell formation and proliferation. T-cell populations were expanded under biologically mimicked rates and conditions. These results provide a quantified value for the number of memory T-cells necessary for vaccine efficacy in an individual; the specifications of what the vaccine must accomplish. Reversing the roles, these results may serve as RVD guidelines for biologically effective vaccines against the Ebola virus.
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Banton, S., Roth, Z., Pavlovic, M. (2010). Mathematical Modeling of Ebola Virus Dynamics as a Step towards Rational Vaccine Design. In: Herold, K.E., Vossoughi, J., Bentley, W.E. (eds) 26th Southern Biomedical Engineering Conference SBEC 2010, April 30 - May 2, 2010, College Park, Maryland, USA. IFMBE Proceedings, vol 32. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14998-6_50
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14998-6_50
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14997-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14998-6
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