Toward multi-organs simulations of immune-pathogen interactions

Abstract Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in bio-medical research by allowing cheap verification of conjectures and exploration of ideas. The IMMUNOGRID project, among other things, has contributed to the development of computer models for the simulation of different human pathologies by adopting the agent-based modeling paradigm. In pursuing the main goal of the project, that is to construct a virtual immune system, we have unwrapped challenges and opportunities. In this article we discuss one of them, that is, how to envisage a multi-scale, multi-organ three dimensional simulator of the immune response that can be a useful tool in medical bioinformatics with the special requirement of being user friendly to non specialists