Fig. 1.

Modeling approaches used to study cytokine interactions. Two main modeling approaches are used; knowledge-based approaches that may utilize Boolean logic, ordinary differential equations (ODE) or rule-based techniques or data-driven approaches in which large experimental datasets are analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA), network or information theory. This is an iterative process with experimental data used to create and validate models, models analyzed to generate predictions which are then tested in further experiments.