A new model for the estimation of cell proliferation dynamics using CFSE data

Abstract

CFSE analysis of a proliferating cell population is a popular tool for the study of cell division and divisionlinked changes in cell behavior. Recently Banks et al. (2011), Luzyanina et al. (2009), Luzyanina et al. (2007), a partial differential equation (PDE) model to describe lymphocyte dynamics in a CFSE proliferation assay was proposed. We present a significant revision of this model which improves the physiological understanding of several parameters. Namely, the parameter used previously as a heuristic explanation for the dilution of CFSE dye by cell division is replaced with a more physical component, cellular autofluorescence. The rate at which label decays is also quantified using a Gompertz decay process. We then demonstrate a revised method of fitting the model to the commonly used histogram representation of the data. It is shown that these improvements result in a model with a strong physiological basis which is fully capable of replicating the behavior observed in the data.