Abstract
The Computational Sciences and Engineering
Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is partnering
with the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine
to design a computational model describing various factors
related to the development of intimal hyperplasia (IH) in
response to arterial injury. This research focuses on modeling
the chemotactic and haptotactic processes that stimulate
vascular smooth muscle cell migration into the intima. A
hybrid discrete-continuous mathematical model of cell
migration in response to biochemical diffusion was developed
in C++. Chemoattractant diffusion is modeled as a continuous
partial differential equation, whereas migration of the cells is
modeled as a series of discrete events. Results obtained from
the discrete state model for cell migration agree with those
obtained from Boyden chamber experiments.
