The Spatial Dynamics of Immune Response upon Virus Infection through Hybrid Dynamical Computational Model

Yanan Cai, Zhongrui Zhao, Changjing Zhuge

Abstract:

Introduction: The immune responses play important roles in the course of
disease initiation and progression upon virus infection such as SARS-CoV-2. As
the tissues consist of spatial structures, the spatial dynamics of immune
responses upon viral infection are essential to the outcome of infection.

Methods: A hybrid computational model based on cellular automata coupled
with partial differential equations is developed to simulate the spatial patterns and
dynamics of the immune responses of tissue upon virus infection with several
different immune movement modes.

Results: Various patterns of the distribution of virus particles under different immune
strengths and movement modes of immune cells are obtained through the
computational models. The results also reveal that the directed immune cell
wandering model has a better immunization effect. Several other characteristics,
such as the peak level of virus density and onset time and the onset of the diseases,
are also checked with different immune and physiological conditions, for example,
different immune clearance strengths, and different cell-to-cell transmission rates.
Furthermore, by the Lasso analysis, it is identified that the three main parameters had
themost impact on the rate of onset time of disease. It is also shown that the cell-tocell
transmission rate has a significant effect and is more important for controlling
the diseases than those for the cell-free virus given that the faster cell-to-cell
transmission than cell-free transmission the rate of virus release is low.

Discussion: Our model simulates the process of viral and immune response
interactions in the alveola repithelial tissues of infected individuals, providing
insights into the viral propagation of viruses in two dimensions as well as the
influence of immune response patterns and key factors on the course of
infection.