Abstract:
CD8 T-cells play a key role during the immune response. Upon encountering a given pathogen for the first time, presented by an antigen presenting cell (APC), these cells proliferate and differentiate to respond to the infection. During the process, a part of them differentiate in memory cells which stay quiescent in the human body, ready to trigger a specific and faster immune response upon encountering the same pathogen later. This is how vaccines work : a small and harmless dose of pathogen is injected to trigger a first immune response and build the immunological repertoire. This way, when an infection with this pathogen occurs, the body is ready to respond faster than the first time. Our work aims at using a two variable maturity structured equation to model these processes at two different, though interconnected, physical scales : the intracellular scale and the population scale. The model will later be confronted to our experimental data, then used to assess which vaccine strategy leads to the greatest number of memory cells, thus leading to better secondary immune responses.