Agent-based modeling of mesenchymal stem cells on a 3D-printed bio-device for the regenerative treatment of the infarcted myocardium

A myocardial infarction (MI) implies an obstruction of the blood flow due to a blockade in the coronary artery, which results in the cellular necrosis of the myocardium due to ischemia. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are non-differentiated cells with the ability to differentiate into any cell type. A regenerative treatment has been proposed for the regeneration of the infarcted myocardium, as the existing ones do not aim at the regeneration of the necrosed tissue. The treatment proposed is based on the design and construction of a 3D-printed biodevice, containing MSCs and other cell types, which can be later implanted on the patient's myocardium. A good understanding of the behavior of the cells in the biodevice is important to guide the treatment research. Thereby, the development of a computational model of the behavior of the MSC and other cell types used in the 3D-printed biodevice is carried out, allowing to better understand its dynamics and the effect that different variables have on it. An Agent-Based modeling (ABM) approach was used for developing a model that considers some fundamental MSC's characteristics and their interactions with the microenvironment, such as immunomodulatory properties, differentiation, and proliferation capacity. Results show that the emergent behavior of the cells in the model agrees with other cellular modeling results, indicating that the model is able to simulate processes that occur in the cellular microenvironment of the infarcted myocardium through the interactions of cells and that it allows the observation of emergent behaviors that can be helpful to determine the characteristics that favor the success of treatment with the 3D-printed biodevice.