Mathematical modeling of immune suppression

Abstract

Administered antibodies can suppress humoral immune response. Though there are two hypotheses explaining the suppression, such as the epitope-masking and Fc-receptor mediated suppression, the epitope-masking hypothesis has garnered more supports. To better understand how the immune suppression works and to gain a quantitative and qualitative insight, we developed the first mathematical immune suppression model based on the epitope-masking hypothesis. However, because the hypothesis does not account for the actual B suppression mechanism, the fact that antigen-depletion induces the arrest of proliferating B cells was incorporated to the model. The model can reproduce immune suppression phenomena and complement the epitope-masking hypothesis by suggesting that the key mechanism for the suppression is the arrest of proliferating B cells and it was shown to be feasible. It is expected that our model gives a new insight to researchers in designing experiments for discovering the underlying mechanism of immune suppression.