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Bioinformatics Advance Access first published online on July 17, 2008
This version published online on July 30, 2008
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn362
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Development of a two-dimensional agent-based model for chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy after stem cell transplantation

Viviane Galvão 1,2,*, José Garcia Vivas Miranda 3 and Ricardo Ribeiro-dos-Santos 2

1Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, 44031-460, Feira de Santana – BA, Brazil, 2Centro de Pesquisa Gonçalo Moniz – Fiocruz, 40296-710, Salvador – BA, Brazil, 3Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 40210-340, Salvador – BA, Brazil

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Vivane Galvão, E-mail: vivianegalvao{at}uefs.br


  Abstract

Motivation: A significant issue in stem cell therapy is to understand the role of this type of cell in the tissue regeneration. To explain this mechanism, an experimental study has quantified that the bone marrow cell transplantation decreases the number of inflammatory cells and reduces the fibrosis area in chagasic mice. Using this experimental data, we have developed an agent-based computational model to investigate the regeneration of the chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy after bone marrow stem cell transplantation.

Results: Our model includes six different types of agents: inflammatory cell, fibrosis area, cardiomyocyte, proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-{alpha}, T. cruzi parasite, and bone marrow stem cell. This latter promotes apoptosis in inflammatory cells, reduction in the fibrosis area and can differentiate into cardiomyocyte. Proin-flammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-{alpha} can increase the fibrosis area and T. cruzi can increase the number of inflammatory cells. Our results for both apoptosis of inflammatory cells and reduction in the fibrosis area were compared with experimental data. They suggest that the concentration pattern is the most important factor to characterize the kinetics of cardiac tissue regeneration after bone marrow stem cell transplantation.

Availability: the source code of our software is available online at www.vivas.ufba.br/bone/bone.zip

Contact: vivianegalvao{at}uefs.br

Associate Editor: Dr. Trey Ideker

Received on March 10, 2008; revised on June 10, 2008; accepted on July 14, 2008

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