Numerical simulations of the model of T cell dynamics in PB vaccines.

<p>Vaccination protocols are defined by initially setting a total antigen dose. A percentage of this total dose (20, 40, 60 or 80%) is used for priming. A) Dynamics of effector T cells (as described by <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0190940#pone.0190940.e001" target="_blank">Eq (1)</a>) triggered by priming. The remaining antigen is inoculated at different boost timings chosen relative to clonal expansion and contraction (black arrows). The point marked as zero corresponds to administering all the antigen dose in a single inoculation. B,C,D) Relative performance of PB protocols for low, intermediate and high antigen doses (<i>A</i>₀ = 2 × 10², <i>A</i>₀ = 2 × 10³ and <i>A</i>₀ = 2 × 10⁴) respectively (see Fig A in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0190940#pone.0190940.s001" target="_blank">S1 File</a>). Darker colors indicate greater memory production. These results correspond to 5000 numerical simulations of the model for the indicated antigen doses, with the rest of the model parameters (in suitable units) randomly chosen within the following intervals: 50 ≤ <i>λ</i>_<i>A</i> ≤ 500, 20 ≤ <i>c</i> ≤ 80, 100 ≤ <i>k</i> ≤ 200, 5 ≤ <i>λ</i>_<i>H</i> ≤ 20, 10⁵ ≤ <i>φ</i> ≤ 10⁷, 1 ≤ <i>μ</i> ≤ 10, 5 ≤ <i>α</i> ≤ 15, 0.001 ≤ <i>β</i> ≤ 0.5 and 1 ≤ <i>E</i>_<i>a</i>(0) = <i>M</i>_<i>a</i>(0)≤10.