An illustration of practical application of the method to the ErbB2/3 network model is given in Section 3. To create local sensitivity spectrum of our model parameters, each nominal parameter Pi was incremented and decremented by 1% of its value (dpi) and the normalised sensitivity coefficient for the area under the pAkt time course profile was calculated as follows ( Zi et al., 2008): CipAkt=SpAkt(Pi+dPi)-SpAkt(Pi-dPi)SpAkt(Pi)2dPiPi The construction and calibration of the ErbB2/3 model was carried out with the use of the DBsolve package for kinetic INCB024360 clinical trial modelling (Gizzatkulov et al., 2010 and Goryanin

et al., 1999). All GSA-related computations were run on Edinburgh University ECDF cluster: 10 nodes were used to run simulations of ODE system for 120,000 Sobol’s points; 200 nodes were used to calculate PRCC indexes for sensitivity analysis. Thus an average analysis took 20 h for model simulation and two hours for sensitivity analysis. ODE system was solved using CVODE solver from SUNDIALS package (Hindmarsh et al., 2005), sensitivity analysis was performed with the package ‘sensitivity’ selleck chemicals (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sensitivity/index.html) in R environment (http://www.r-project.org/). PE04 and OVCAR4 cells were

grown as monolayer cultures in RPMI supplemented with 10% heat-inactivated foetal calf serum (FCS) and penicillin/streptomycin (100 IU/mL) in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2 at 37 °C. Time course experiments were set up by plating cells into 10 cm diameter petri dishes and leaving for 24 h. Cells were then briefly washed in PBS before transferring to phenol red-free DMEM containing 5% double Fossariinae charcoal-stripped serum supplemented with penicillin/streptomycin (100 IU/mL) and glutamine (0.3 mg/mL) for a further 48 h prior to treatment. Cells were treated with UCN-01 (protein kinase inhibitor; Calbiochem #539644; final concentration of 1 μM), LY294002 (PI3 kinase

inhibitor; Calbiochem #440204; final concentration 20 μM), Pertuzumab (ErbB2 inhibitor; final concentration 100 nM) and stimulation by Heregulin (R&D Systems; 396-HB-CF) was at final concentration of 1 nM. Cells were treated for 15 min with the aforementioned drugs as appropriate immediately followed by the addition of heregulin-β (1 nM). The concentrations of drugs used in the experiments corresponded to the dose causing 50% inhibition of cell growth. Samples were collected at time points of 1, 5, 30, and 60 min after initiation of heregulin treatment, washed in PBS, and immediately lysed in ice-cold isotonic lysis buffer [50 mM Tris–HCl (pH 7.5), 5 mM EGTA (pH 8.5), 150 mM NaCl, 1% Triton X-100] supplemented with aprotinin (10 μg/mL), phosphatase inhibitor cocktail A (Sigma, P2850), phosphatase inhibitor cocktail B (Sigma, P5726) and a protease inhibitor cocktail (Roche, 11836153001). Lysates were centrifuged for 6 min at 13,000g and protein concentrations of supernatants subsequently determined using the BCA assay (Sigma, BCA-1).