Computer Simulation Of Haematopoietic Stem Cells Migration Using COMSOL Multiphysics

G. Bencheva
Institute for information and communication technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
Published in 2010

Various haematological diseases, including leukaemia, are characterized by abnormal production of particular blood cells. Two important properties of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are used in their therapy, namely: a) rapid migratory activity and ability to \'\'home\'\' to their niche in the bone marrow; b) high self-renewal and differentiation capacity, responsible for the production and regulation of the three blood cell types. The attention in the current work is focused on a mathematical model for a). The HSCs migration in the direction of chemoattractant, produced by stroma cells is described by a chemotaxis system of nonlinear partial differential equations. The unknowns of the model are concentrations of the HSCs, the chemoattractant and the stem cells bound to stroma cells on part of the boundary. The model is implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics, using the Partial Differential Equation (PDE) mode. The chemotaxis system is represented by a system of two PDEs, where the COMSOL opportunity to add an ODE on part of the boundary is used.

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