Multiscale Computational Modeling in Vascular Biology: From Molecular Mechanisms to Tissue-Level Structure and Function

Abstract

Blood vessels exhibit a remarkable ability to adapt in response to sustained alterations in hemodynamic loads and diverse disease processes. Although such adaptations typically manifest at the tissue level, underlying mechanisms exist at cellular and molecular levels. Dramatic technological advances in recent years, including sophisticated theoretical and computational modeling, have enabled significantly increased understanding at tissue, cellular, and molecular levels, yet there has been little attempt to integrate the associated models across these length and time scales. In this chapter, we suggest a new paradigm for identifying strengths and weaknesses of models at different scales and for establishing congruent models that more completely predict vascular adaptations. Specifically, we show the importance of linking intracellular with cellular models and cellular models with tissue level models. In this way, we propose a new approach for incorporating events across these three levels, thus providing a means to predict phenomena that can only emerge from a system of integrated interactions.