The Wound Environment Agent-based Model (WEABM): a digital twin platform for characterization and complex therapeutic discovery for volumetric muscle loss

Abstract

Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML) injuries are characterized by significant loss of muscle mass, usually due to trauma or surgical resection, often with a residual open wound in clinical settings and subsequent loss of limb function due to the replacement of the lost muscle mass with non-functional scar. Being able to regrow functional muscle in VML injuries is a complex control problem that needs to override robust, evolutionarily conserved healing processes aimed at rapidly closing the defect in lieu of restoration of function. We propose that discovering and implementing this complex control can be accomplished by the development of a Medical Digital Twin of VML. Digital Twins (DTs) are the subject of a recent report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), which provides guidance as to the definition, capabilities and research challenges associated with the development and implementation of DTs. Specifically, DTs are defined as dynamic computational models that can be personalized to an individual real world "twin" and are connected to that twin via an ongoing data link. DTs can be used to provide control on the real-world twin that is, by the ongoing data connection, adaptive. We have developed an anatomic scale cell-level agent-based model of VML termed the Wound Environment Agent Based Model (WEABM) that can serve as the computational specification for a DT of VML. Simulations of the WEABM provided fundamental insights into the biology of VML, and we used the WEABM in our previously developed pipeline for simulation-based Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to train an artificial intelligence (AI) to implement a robust generalizable control policy aimed at increasing the healing of VML with functional muscle. The insights into VML obtained include: 1) a competition between fibrosis and myogenesis due to spatial constraints on available edges of intact myofibrils to initiate the myoblast differentiation process, 2) the need to biologically "close" the wound from atmospheric/environmental exposure, which represents an ongoing inflammatory stimulus that promotes fibrosis and 3) that selective, multimodal and adaptive local mediator-level control can shift the trajectory of healing away from a highly evolutionarily beneficial imperative to close the wound via fibrosis. Control discovery with the WEABM identified the following design principles: 1) multimodal adaptive tissue-level mediator control to mitigate pro-inflammation as well as the pro-fibrotic aspects of compensatory anti-inflammation, 2) tissue-level mediator manipulation to promote myogenesis, 3) the use of an engineered extracellular matrix (ECM) to functionally close the wound and 4) the administration of an anti-fibrotic agent focused on the collagen-producing function of fibroblasts and myofibroblasts. The WEABM-trained DRL AI integrates these control modalities and provides design specifications for a potential device that can implement the required wound sensing and intervention delivery capabilities needed. The proposed cyber-physical system integrates the control AI with a physical sense-and-actuate device that meets the tenets of DTs put forth in the NASEM report and can serve as an example schema for the future development of Medical DTs.