Simulating the Dynamics of T Cell Subsets throughout the Lifetime

摘要

It is widely accepted that the immune system undergoes age-related changes correlating with increased disease in the elderly. T cell subsets have been implicated. The aim of this work is firstly to implement and validate a simulation of T regulatory cell (T_(reg)) dynamics throughout the lifetime, based on a model by Baltcheva. We show that our initial simulation produces an inversion between precursor and mature T_(reg)s at around 20 years of age, though the output differs significantly from the original laboratory dataset. Secondly, this report discusses development of the model to incorporate new data from a cross-sectional study of healthy blood donors addressing balance between T_(reg)s and T_h 17 cells with novel markers for T_(reg). The potential for simulation to add insight into immune aging is discussed.