STI-GMaS: An open-source environment for simulation of sexually-transmitted infections

Background: Sexually-transmitted pathogens often have severe reproductive health implications if treatment is or absent, especially in females. The complex processes of disease progression, namely replication and of the infection through the genital tract, span both extracellular and intracellular physiological scales, and females can vary over the distinct phases of the menstrual cycle. The complexity of these processes, coupled with common impossibility of obtaining comprehensive and sequential clinical data from individual human patients, mathematical and computational modelling valuable tools in developing our understanding of the infection, a view to identifying new interventions. While many within-host models of sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) available in existing literature, these models are difficult to deploy in clinical/experimental settings since often require complex computational approaches. : We present STI-GMaS (Sexually-Transmitted Infections – Graphical Modelling and Simulation), an for simulation of STI models, with a view to stimulating the uptake of these models within the laboratory clinic. The software currently focuses upon the representative case-study of Chlamydia trachomatis, themost sexually-transmitted bacterial pathogen of humans. Here, we demonstrate the use of a hybrid PDE–cellular model for simulation of a hypothetical Chlamydia vaccination, demonstrating the effect of a -induced antibody in preventing the infection from ascending to above the cervix. This example illustrates the with which existing models can be adapted to describe new studies, and its careful parameterisation within -GMaS facilitates future tuning to experimental data as they arise. : STI-GMaS represents the first software designed explicitly for in-silico simulation of STI models by nontheoreticians, presenting a novel route to bridging the gap between computational and clinical/experimental . With the propensity for model reuse and extension, there is much scope within STI-GMaS to allow clinical experimental studies to inform model inputs and drive future model development. Many of the modelling and software design principles deployed to date transfer readily to other STIs, both bacterial and viral; releases of STI-GMaS will extend the software to incorporate a more diverse range of infections.