MODELING IMMUNODOMINANCE IN THE B-CELL RESPONSE TO VIRAL INFECTION

Adaptive immune response can be accompanied by immunodominance which manifests itself by competition of different clones of antigen-specific lymphocytes and corresponding antibodies. This competition can lead to hierarchy of antibodies and to competitive exclusion of some of them. In this work we develop a new model of immunodominance based on partial integrodifferential equations and take into account random mutations of B-cell receptors, competition of cell clones for resources, and epitope-specific virus neutralization. Dynamics of immune response is studied, and it is shown that immunodominance can weaken the immune response since the dominating antibodies are not necessarily most efficient for virus neutralization, as observed in COVID-19 patients. © 2023 MSP (Mathematical Sciences Publishers).