Autonomous Targeting of Infectious Superspreaders Using Engineered Transmissible Therapies

Metzger, Vincent T.; Lloyd-Smith, James O.; Weinberger, Leor S.

The multi-scale analysis of TIPs and HIV-1 is built upon previous data-driven models [12, 19] and is composed of three constituent ordinary differential equation models describing dynamics at different hierarchical scales: (i) among a population of host individuals ('population level') (ii) within host individuals ('individual patient') (iii) within infected host cells ('intracellular'). The multi-scale model specifies mechanistic links between each scale and the next scale of organizational complexity (intracellular R in vivo R population level). The population-level TIP model is a simplified version of a riskstructured model constructed from UNAIDS field-data collected from antenatal clinics in Malawi [12] , which includes a riskstructure formulation with four distinct sexual-activity classes (SACs) and which we refer to as the 'Baggaley model'. Individuals are classified as susceptible (S), HIV infected (I), susceptible to HIV but infected with TIP (S t ), dually infected with HIV and TIP (I d ), as an AIDS patient with wild-type virus (A w ), or as a dually infected AIDS patient (A d ). Individuals in all disease-states are divided into SACs in accordance with field data (indicated by subscript i), except that all individuals in the A w class are assumed (as in [12] ) to have sexual contacts at the rate corresponding to the lowest risk group (SAC 4) owing to their poor health. The model equations are as follows: