Affinity and avidity models in autoimmune disease

Abstract

In this work, we develop a theoretical model of affinity and avidity in the immune system.The model is based on an extension of the Cubic Ternary Complex (CTC) model of receptor - ligandinteractions to the immunological synapse setting. We use the resulting equation to study how lysiscan occur for a cell exhibiting only self proteins. This general affinity model gives a nice quantitativetool which can be used to explore a nonlinear model of how a T Cell can have a productive interactionwith a MHC-I complex even though the encapsulated peptide fragment is a self protein. The modelbuilt will allow the creation of even more general autoimmune models within the framework of B andT Cell differentiation via cytokine signalling families.

Keywords

• T cell models
• cubic ternary complex receptor
• ligand interactions
• immunological kinapses and synapses
• self versus non-self computations
• affinity
• efficacy and avidity models