Modeling vaccine degradation
This expository paper is an introduction to the mathematical modelling of vaccine degradation and to its industrial applications, including the study of vaccine stability and the so called “WHO last mile” program.
The main objective of the journal MathematicS in Action is to promote the interactions of Mathematics with other scientific fields (Biology, Medicine, Economics, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Mechanics, Environmental sciences, Engineering sciences, etc.) by publishing articles at their interfaces. These articles must be useful and globally accessible to both communities. Thus, the journal favours articles written by ay least two authors, one of them being a mathematician, the other one belonging to another scientific community.
The papers should address modelling issues (conception, analysis and validation of models), numerical and/or experimental methods.
They should preferably include both a mathematical part and, at choice, numerical or experimental results.
They should be very pedagogical on the motivations and the expected impact in both disciplines.
Each submitted paper will be evaluated equally for its mathematical quality and for its interest to the concerned application field. To be accepted a paper needs to be of the highest scientific quality, original, and strongly interdisciplinary.
The Journal is an electronic publication and all articles are freely available. However, each year a printed version is sent to a selection of libraries.
This journal, previously hosted by Cedram, is now web-published by the Centre Mersenne.
In 2019, Cedram has become the Centre Mersenne for open scientific publishing, a publishing platform for scientific journals developed by Mathdoc.
This expository paper is an introduction to the mathematical modelling of vaccine degradation and to its industrial applications, including the study of vaccine stability and the so called “WHO last mile” program.
We are interested in the system of ion channels present at the membrane of the human red blood cell. The cell, under specific experimental circumstances, presents important variations of its membrane potential coupled to variations of the main ions’ concentration ensuring its homeostasis.
In this collaborative work between biologists and mathematicians a simple mathematical model is designed to explain experimental measurements of membrane potential and ion concentrations. Its construction is presented, as well as illustrative simulations and a calibration of the model on real data measurements. A sensitivity analysis of the model parameters is performed. The impact of blood sample storage on ion permeabilities is discussed.