Successful vaccines work by inducing the development of memory B-cells that produce high-affinity\u00a0antibody to antigens possessed by the microbe or virus against which the vaccine is directed. The key to\u00a0the development of high-affinity antibodies is affinity maturation. In this process, somatic mutations are\u00a0introduced into the genes that encode the antibody heavy and light chains. B-cells that bear mutated\u00a0receptors with improved affinity for the eliciting ligand are thereby given a selective growth advantage\u00a0and become the memory cells that provide protection against subsequent challenges. These events\u00a0take place in the Darwinian microcosm of the germinal centers in the secondary lymphoid tissues. These\u00a0structures self-organize via signals exchanged by T-cells, B-cells, follicular dendritic cells, and several\u00a0kinds of stromal cells.<\/p>\n
Daphne<\/strong> is a desktop application for modeling the immune response, with special focus on the\u00a0spatiotemporal dynamics of the germinal center reaction and its modulation by candidate vaccine\u00a0adjuvants. The software will comprise several core components: a modeling platform, a library of\u00a0statistical analysis modules, a data management system, a data visualization system, a library of\u00a0calibration data sets, and a graphical user interface.\u00a0The software is being engineered for use by immunologists and other biomedical scientists eager\u00a0to harness the power of modeling and computational biology but with little or no training in the\u00a0mathematical sciences. These applications are being built around intuitive graphical user interfaces and\u00a0extensive ontology-based run-time documentation. Behind the friendly exterior, however, is a powerful,\u00a0flexible simulation engine directed initially at the study of the germinal center reaction, but capable of\u00a0being utilized for the study of a wide variety of cellular systems. To download the latest installer, please refer to\u00a0this <\/a>link.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This work was supported by the Multiscale Systems Immunology (MSI) contract HHSN272201000053C and U19AI117892 grant under the Modeling Immunity for Biodefense program,\u00a0which is funded by the NIH\/NIAID.<\/p>\n