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Multiscale Modeling of Malaria-Infected Red Blood Cells

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Abstract

Malaria is a parasitic disease which takes approximately half a million lives every year. The unicellular parasites are transmitted by mosquitoes and mainly affect vascular blood flow by invading red blood cells (RBCs). The pathogenicity of malaria primarily results from substantial changes in the stiffness of infected RBCs and their ability to adhere to endothelial cells and other circulating blood cells, leading to a substantial disruption of normal blood circulation and inflammation of the vascular endothelium. Multiscale modeling of malaria has proved to contribute significantly to the understanding of this devastating disease. In particular, modeling on the level of single infected RBCs allows quantification of their mechanics, cytoadherence, and individual as well as collective behavior in blood flow. Recent modeling advances in this direction are discussed. We show how computational models in malaria are validated and used for the interpretation of experimental observations or the establishment of new physical hypotheses. Such computational models have a strong potential to elucidate a number of physical mechanisms relevant for malaria and to aid in the development of novel diagnostic tools and treatment strategies.

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Acknowledgements

A.K.D. and U.S.S. acknowledge support by the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1129 on “Integrative Analysis of Pathogen Replication and Spread.” G.G. and D.A.F acknowledge the FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN LAPASO “Label-free particle sorting” for financial support. D.A.F acknowledges funding by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. G.G. and D.A.F also gratefully acknowledge a CPU time grant by the Jülich Supercomputing Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BioQuant-Center for Quantitative Biology and Institute of Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Anil K. Dasanna & Ulrich S. Schwarz

  2. Institute of Complex Systems and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany

    Gerhard Gompper & Dmitry A. Fedosov

Authors
  1. Anil K. Dasanna
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  2. Ulrich S. Schwarz
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  3. Gerhard Gompper
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  4. Dmitry A. Fedosov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dmitry A. Fedosov .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Wanda Andreoni

  2. Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Sidney Yip

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Ming Dao

  2. Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    George E Karniadakis

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Dasanna, A.K., Schwarz, U.S., Gompper, G., Fedosov, D.A. (2018). Multiscale Modeling of Malaria-Infected Red Blood Cells. In: Andreoni, W., Yip, S. (eds) Handbook of Materials Modeling. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50257-1_66-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50257-1_66-1

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