Hematopoiesis as a continuum: from stochastic compartmental model to hydrodynamic limit

Abstract

We consider a multiscale stochastic compartmental model with three types of cells (stem cells, immature cells and mature cells) which combines cell proliferation and cell differentiation. We derive a hydrodynamic limit when the number of immature compartments goes to infinity obtaining a partial differential equations system with boundary conditions, modelling hematopoiesis as a continuum. We assume that proliferation and differentiation are regulated and let the corresponding rates depend on the number of mature cells. This leads us to model the dynamics of the population by a Markov process in continuous time and discrete space, which does not satisfy the branching property. We prove the convergence in law of the stem and mature cells population size processes and of the empirical measures of the immature cells dynamics, conveniently rescaled, to the unique triplet involving coupled functions and a measure, which are solutions of a deterministic measure valued equation with boundary dynamics. The cell differentiation induces a transport term in space and the main difficulty comes from the boundary effects coming from stem and mature cells. We also prove that the limiting measure admits at each time a density with respect to Lebesgue measure and can be characterized as solution of a partial differential equation.