Modelling Tumor-Immune Systems With Cell-DEVS

Cell-DEVS, an extension of the DEVS formalism, is used to model tumor-immune systems that involve growing tumors interacting with immune cells. Tumors can be regarded as a core of necrotic cells, surrounded by dormant cells, surrounded in turn by proliferative cells. The growth of a tumor is effected by the division of its proliferative cells, but inhibited by nearby immune cells. We present a Cell-DEVS model representing a tumorimmune system. The use of Cell-DEVS is advantageous as it facilitates the formal specification and reuse of cellular models. The Cell-DEVS model was implemented and tested using the CD++ toolkit. Simulation results indicate that, in a qualitative sense, the desired behaviour of tumors and immune cells was captured.