The Virtual Cell Modeling and Simulation Framework (VCell) was developed by the National Resource for Cell Analysis and Modeling. This unique software platform has been designed to model cell biological processes, through describing and processing biochemical and electrophysiological data of individual reactions; commonly, the model is built based off of associated experimental microscopic image data that describes the model's subcellular locations. Cell physiological events can then be simulated within the empirically derived geometries, thus facilitating the direct comparison of model predictions with experiment.
VCell consists of a biological and mathematical framework. As described in the Overview, users can create biological models from which the software will generate the mathematical code needed to run simulations. Mathematicians may opt to use the math framework, based on the Virtual Cell Markup Language (VCML), for creating their own mathematical descriptions. Models can be reused, updated, and made available to the scientific community. In addition, models may also be privately shared amongst collaborating groups. The data from simulations are stored on the Virtual Cell database server and are easily exported in a variety of formats. Access to the Virtual Cell modeling software is available a desktop application written in java, with certain features available through a REST API. The Virtual Cell has been developed using the latest supported Java technology.