Pappalardo F, Lollini P-L, Castiglione F, Motta S
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Catania, Italy.
Bioinformatics. 2005 Jun 15;21(12):2891-7. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bti426. Epub 2005 Apr 7.
We present an in silico model that simulates the immune system responses to tumor cells in naive and vaccinated mice. We have demonstrated the ability of this model to accurately reproduce the experimental results.
In vivo experiments on HER-2/neu mice have shown the effectiveness of Triplex vaccine in the protection of mice from mammary carcinoma. Full protection was conferred using chronic (prophylactic) vaccination protocol while therapeutic vaccination was less efficient. Our in silico model was able to closely reproduce the effects of various vaccination protocols. This model is the first step towards the development of in silico experiments searching for optimal vaccination protocols.
In silico experiments carried out on two large statistical samples of virtual mice showed very good agreements with in vivo experiments for all experimental vaccination protocols. They also show, as supported by in vivo experiments, that the humoral response is fundamental in controlling the tumor growth and therefore suggest the selection and timing of experiments for measuring the activity of T cells.
我们展示了一个计算机模拟模型，该模型可模拟未接种疫苗和接种疫苗的小鼠免疫系统对肿瘤细胞的反应。我们已经证明了该模型准确再现实验结果的能力。
对HER-2/neu小鼠进行的体内实验表明，三联疫苗在保护小鼠免受乳腺癌侵害方面具有有效性。使用慢性（预防性）疫苗接种方案可实现完全保护，而治疗性疫苗接种效率较低。我们的计算机模拟模型能够紧密再现各种疫苗接种方案的效果。该模型是朝着开展计算机模拟实验以寻找最佳疫苗接种方案迈出的第一步。
在两个大型虚拟小鼠统计样本上进行的计算机模拟实验表明，对于所有实验性疫苗接种方案，其与体内实验结果非常吻合。体内实验也支持这些结果，即体液反应在控制肿瘤生长中至关重要，因此建议选择并确定测量T细胞活性的实验时间。
