Abstract James Glazier

                               Multi-Scale, Multi-Cell Modeling of Development and Developmental Diseases
                                                                             James A. Glazier
                                                      Biocomplexity Institute and Department of Physics
                                                                             Indiana University
                                                                        Simon Hall MSB1, 047G
                                                                        212 S. Hawthorne Drive
                                                                    Bloomington, IN  47405-7003

The construction, maintenance and disruption of tissues emerge from the interactions of cells with each other, the extracellular microenvironment that the cells create and their external boundary conditions. Our ability to make biomedically meaningful predictions at the organ or organism level is limited because of the difficulty of predicting the emergent properties of large ensembles of cells. A middle-out approach to model building starting from cell behaviors and combining subcellular molecular reaction kinetics models, the physical and mechanical behaviors of cells and the longer range effects of the extracellular environment, allows us to address such emergence. I will discuss CompuCell3D as a multi-scale, multi-cell modeling platform to study such emergent phenomena and to connect them to their physiological outcomes. I will illustrate three projects using CompuCell3D, segmentation during normal embryonic development, the development and of blood vessels and its effect on the growth of a generic model solid tumor and Choroidal Neovascularization (CNV) in Age-Related Macular Degeneration (the most common cause of blindness among the elderly).