A Predictive Tool for Foreign Body Fibrotic Reactions Using 2-Dimensional Computational Model.

Abstract

It is well established that implanted medical devices often trigger immunological and inflammatory reactions. Such foreign body-mediated tissue responses may result in fibrotic tissue formation surrounding the implants. Despite of intensive research in the area of wound healing, few methods are currently available to systematically predict the quantitative behavior of the complex system of multiple cells, proteins and enzymes during foreign body-associated fibrotic reactions. This study introduces a kinetics-based predictive tool to analyze outcomes of reactions of various cells/proteins and biochemical processes and to understand transient behavior during the entire implant healing period up to several months in time. A computational model in two spatial dimensions is constructed to investigate the time dynamics as well as spatial variation of fibrotic reaction kinetics. Our results have shown that this model can be used to predict many features in a systematic way and also complement the traditional immunological methodology by experiments or empirical data predictions.