Mathematical Biology

I’m excited to announce our next Math-Bio seminar, happening next Wednesday, March 25th, at 2:00 pm (Pacific Time) in the PIMS lounge (ESB 4133). PIMS tea will follow the seminar at around 3:00 pm.

Our speaker will be Joel Vanin, a PhD student at the Indiana University. This talk will be done remotely, but our usual watch party will still happen! Below is more information about this exciting talk.

If you cannot make to the watch party join us through zoom:

https://ubc.zoom.us/j/65246006268?pwd=vFrUpDrzPEYGZ3dSezvCp2uiupsdiO.1

Meeting ID: 652 4600 6268

Passcode: 988036

Predicting injury severity and time-to-recovery after ocular chemical exposure is critical for chemical classification and risk assessment. Time-resolved in vitro data from localized injury on reconstructed corneal epithelium reveal concentration-dependent lesion evolution, including secondary propagation likely driven by necrotic cell rupture, yet these assays cannot alone predict tissue-level recovery. To address this gap, we extend V-Cornea, a published multi-scale agent-based model of epithelial homeostasis and recovery from slight to mild injuries, with stochastic Boolean networks governing cell-fate decisions between survival, apoptosis, and necrosis as functions of local chemical concentration. This extended framework serves as an in silico NAM and engine for in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE). Leveraging the model as a computational hypothesis generator, we performed systematic sweeps of concentration and exposure duration, producing phase diagrams that map exposure conditions to outcome regimes ranging from containment to catastrophic spread. Without immune-mediated debris clearance, the damage loop lacks an off-switch, mirroring in vitro observations but diverging from in vivo recovery. This divergence defines the IVIVE boundary and motivates the introduction of immune dynamics to provide the missing recovery signals, enabling extrapolation to in vivo predictions of injury severity and recovery time.