Rapid community-driven development of a SARS-CoV-2 tissue simulator

Yafei Wang; Randy Heiland; Morgan Craig; Courtney L. Davis; Ashlee N Ford Versypt; Adrianne Jenner; Jonathan Ozik; Nicholson Collier; Chase Cockrell; Andrew Becker; Gary An; James A. Glazier; Aarthi Narayanan; Amber M Smith; Paul Macklin

Within three weeks of the World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic of COVID-19 114 , community-based prototyping built upon an existing PhysiCell 3D cell-modeling framework to rapidly develop Version 1 of an intracellular and tissue-level model of SARS-CoV-2 82 . A growing coalition of domain experts from across STEM fields are working together to ensure accuracy and utility of this agent-based model of intracellular, extracellular, and multicellular SARS-CoV-2 infection dynamics. Version 1 development underscored the necessity of clearly explaining model components, defining scope, and communicating progress as it occurs for invaluable real-time feedback from collaborators and the broader community. This rapid prototyping already helped in growing the coalition and recruiting complementary expertise; for instance, a team modeling lymph node dynamics and immune infiltration joined during the Version 1 cycle after seeing initial progress.