Modelling the Control of an Immune Response Through Cytokine Signalling - Artificial Immune Systems - page 19

Fig. 6. Cell activation levels during the simulation
Fig. 7. Cytokine secretion for the initially stimulated effector cell 2
end the initiated response. Figure 6 shows the activation level for effector cells
1, 2 and 3, and regulatory cell 7, during the simulation procedure, while figures
7, 8 and 9 show the cytokine absorption and secretion for these cells.
The results indicate that the model, with the parameters presented in table
1, is able to exhibit the expected response characteristic, with the recruitment of
cells and, after some time, termination of the response. Figure 6 shows that cell
number 2 (initially stimulated) remains highly active (with an activation level
close to 1) for 12 iterations, and quickly decays, reaching a resting condition by
iteration 15. In the same figure, it can be seen that effector cells 1 and 3 have
reached a peak activation level equals to 0.57 at iteration 14, quickly declining
and reaching a low activation level by iteration 16. The regulatory cell (number
7) has reached a peak activation level equals to 0.18 at the same time than
effector cells 1 and 3 have. One interesting characteristic of the response shown