# American Institute of Mathematical Sciences

ISSN:
1551-0018

eISSN:
1547-1063

All Issues

## Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering

2016 , Volume 13 , Issue 6

Special issue on mathematical methods in systems biology

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2016, 13(6): i-ii doi: 10.3934/mbe.201606i +[Abstract](1895) +[PDF](79.1KB)
Abstract:
The editors of this Special Issue of Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering were the organizers for the Third International Workshop "Mathematical Methods in System Biology" that took place on June 15-18, 2015 at the University College Dublin in Ireland. As stated in the workshop goals, we managed to attract a good mix of mathematicians and statisticians working on biological and medical applications with biologists and clinicians interested in presenting their challenging problems and looking to find mathematical and statistical tools for their solutions.

2016, 13(6): 1119-1130 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016033 +[Abstract](1735) +[PDF](1066.8KB)
Abstract:
The goal of this study is automated discrimination between early stage Alzheimer$'$s disease (AD) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and healthy MRI data. Unsupervised Diffusion Component Analysis, a novel approach based on the diffusion mapping framework, reduces data dimensionality and provides pattern recognition that can be used to distinguish AD brains from healthy brains. The new algorithm constructs coordinates as an extension of diffusion maps and generates efficient geometric representations of the complex structure of the MRI data. The key difference between our method and others used to classify and detect AD early in its course is our nonlinear and local network approach, which overcomes calibration differences among different scanners and centers collecting MRI data and solves the problem of individual variation in brain size and shape. In addition, our algorithm is completely automatic and unsupervised, which could potentially be a useful and practical tool for doctors to help identify AD patients.
2016, 13(6): 1131-1142 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016034 +[Abstract](1773) +[PDF](423.1KB)
Abstract:
We investigate a spatial model of growth of a tumor and its sensitivity to radiotherapy. It is assumed that the radiation dose may vary in time and space, like in intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). The change of the final state of the tumor depends on local differences in the radiation dose and varies with the time and the place of these local changes. This leads to the concept of a tumor's spatiotemporal sensitivity to radiation, which is a function of time and space. We show how adjoint sensitivity analysis may be applied to calculate the spatiotemporal sensitivity of the finite difference scheme resulting from the partial differential equation describing the tumor growth. We demonstrate results of this approach to the tumor proliferation, invasion and response to radiotherapy (PIRT) model and we compare the accuracy and the computational effort of the method to the simple forward finite difference sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, we use the spatiotemporal sensitivity during the gradient-based optimization of the spatiotemporal radiation protocol and present results for different parameters of the model.
2016, 13(6): 1143-1158 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016035 +[Abstract](1457) +[PDF](1076.4KB)
Abstract:
A proposed model consisting of two coupled models (Hodgkin-Huxley and Yanagihara-Noma-Irisawa model) is considered as a description of the heart's action potential. System of ordinary differential equations is used to recreate pathological behaviour in the conducting heart's system such as double fire and the most common tachycardia: atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT). Part of the population has an abnormal accessory pathways: fast and slow (Fujiki, 2008). These pathways in the atrioventricular node (AV node) are anatomical and functional contributions of supraventricular tachycardia. However, the appearance of two pathways in the AV node may be a contribution of arrhythmia, which is caused by coexistent conduction by two pathways (called double fire). The difference in the conduction time between these pathways is the most important factor. This is the reason to introduce three types of couplings and delay to our system in order to reproduce various types of the AVNRT. In our research, introducing the feedback loops and couplings entails the creation of waves which can correspond to the re-entry waves occurring in the AVNRT. Our main aim is to study solutions of the given equations and take into consideration the influence of feedback and delays which occur in these pathological modes. We also present stability analysis for both components, that is Hodgkin-Huxley and Yanagihara-Noma-Irisawa models, as well as for the final double-fire model.
2016, 13(6): 1159-1168 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016036 +[Abstract](1413) +[PDF](382.6KB)
Abstract:
One of the primary considerations in immunoassay design is optimizing the concentration of capture antibody in order to achieve maximal antigen binding and, subsequently, improved sensitivity and limit of detection. Many immunoassay technologies involve immobilization of the antibody to solid surfaces. Antibodies are large molecules in which the position and accessibility of the antigen-binding site depend on their orientation and packing density.
In this paper we propose a simple mathematical model, based on the theory known as random sequential adsorption (RSA), in order to calculate how the concentration of correctly oriented antibodies (active site exposed for subsequent reactions) evolves during the deposition process. It has been suggested by experimental studies that high concentrations will decrease assay performance, due to molecule denaturation and obstruction of active binding sites. However, crowding of antibodies can also have the opposite effect by favouring upright orientations. A specific aim of our model is to predict which of these competing effects prevails under different experimental conditions and study the existence of an optimal coverage, which yields the maximum expected concentration of active particles (and hence the highest signal).
2016, 13(6): 1169-1183 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016037 +[Abstract](1624) +[PDF](688.5KB)
Abstract:
In this work, we investigate chemo- thermotherapy, a recently clinically-approved post-surgery treatment of non muscle invasive urothelial bladder carcinoma. We developed a mathematical model and numerically simulated the physical processes related to this treatment. The model is based on the conductive Maxwell's equations used to simulate the therapy administration and Convection-Diffusion equation for incompressible fluid to study heat propagation through the bladder tissue. The model parameters correspond to the data provided by the thermotherapy device manufacturer. We base our computational domain on a CT image of a human bladder. Our numerical simulations can be applied to further research on the effects of chemo- thermotherapy on bladder and surrounding tissues and for treatment personalization in order to maximize the effect of the therapy while avoiding burning of the bladder.
2016, 13(6): 1185-1206 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016038 +[Abstract](2432) +[PDF](1516.6KB)
Abstract:
While chemoresistance in primary tumors is well-studied, much less is known about the influence of systemic chemotherapy on the development of drug resistance at metastatic sites. In this work, we use a hybrid spatial model of tumor response to a DNA damaging drug to study how the development of chemoresistance in micrometastases depends on the drug dosing schedule. We separately consider cell populations that harbor pre-existing resistance to the drug, and those that acquire resistance during the course of treatment. For each of these independent scenarios, we consider one hypothetical cell line that is responsive to metronomic chemotherapy, and another that with high probability cannot be eradicated by a metronomic protocol. Motivated by experimental work on ovarian cancer xenografts, we consider all possible combinations of a one week treatment protocol, repeated for three weeks, and constrained by the total weekly drug dose. Simulations reveal a small number of fractionated-dose protocols that are at least as effective as metronomic therapy in eradicating micrometastases with acquired resistance (weak or strong), while also being at least as effective on those that harbor weakly pre-existing resistant cells. Given the responsiveness of very different theoretical cell lines to these few fractionated-dose protocols, these may represent more effective ways to schedule chemotherapy with the goal of limiting metastatic tumor progression.
2016, 13(6): 1207-1222 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016039 +[Abstract](1527) +[PDF](4944.8KB)
Abstract:
This paper deals with development of signaling pathways models and using plasmid-based experiments to support parameter estimation. We show that if cells transfected with plasmids are used in experiments, the models should include additional components that describe explicitly effects induced by plasmids. Otherwise, when the model is used to analyze responses of wild type, i.e. non-transfected cells, it may not capture their dynamics properly or even lead to false conclusions. In order to illustrate this, an original mathematical model of miRNA-mediated control of gene expression in the NF$\kappa$B pathway is presented. The paper shows what artifacts might appear due to experimental procedures and how to develop the models in order to avoid pursuing these artifacts instead of real kinetics.
2016, 13(6): 1223-1240 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016040 +[Abstract](2205) +[PDF](977.7KB)
Abstract:
We consider cancer chemotherapy as an optimal control problem with the aim to minimize a combination of the tumor volume and side effects over an a priori specified therapy horizon when the tumor consists of a heterogeneous agglomeration of many subpopulations. The mathematical model, which accounts for different growth and apoptosis rates in the presence of cell densities, is a finite-dimensional approximation of a model originally formulated by Lorz et al. [18,19] and Greene et al. [10,11] with a continuum of possible traits. In spite of an arbitrarily high dimension, for this problem singular controls (which correspond to time-varying administration schedules at less than maximum doses) can be computed explicitly in feedback form. Interestingly, these controls have the property to keep the entire tumor population constant. Numerical computations and simulations that explore the optimality of bang-bang and singular controls are given. These point to the optimality of protocols that combine a full dose therapy segment with a period of lower dose drug administration.
2016, 13(6): 1241-1251 doi: 10.3934/mbe.2016041 +[Abstract](2428) +[PDF](540.8KB)
Abstract:
Inferring gene regulatory networks is an important problem in systems biology. However, these networks can be hard to infer from experimental data because of the inherent variability in biological data as well as the large number of genes involved. We propose a fast, simple method for inferring regulatory relationships between genes from knockdown experiments in the NIH LINCS dataset by calculating posterior probabilities, incorporating prior information. We show that the method is able to find previously identified edges from TRANSFAC and JASPAR and discuss the merits and limitations of this approach.

2018  Impact Factor: 1.313