This week in MathOnco 303b

Spatial landscapes, tumor organoids, neural-ODE's, drug tolerance, and more...

“This week in Mathematical Oncology” — August 15, 2024

> mathematical-oncology.org

From the editor:

An unfinished version of this edition was mistakenly sent out a day early— sorry about that, let’s try again:

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Fall is approaching, and with it the Fields Institute Mathematical Oncology thematic program. Check out the “News” section below where we will be highlighting summaries from the planned workshops and seminars.

Thanks,

Jeffrey West
jeffrey.west@moffitt.org

1. Spatial landscapes of cancers: insights and opportunities
   Julia Chen, Ludvig Larsson, Alexander Swarbrick & Joakim Lundeberg

2. Exploiting the tumor microenvironment and tumor mechanobiology for the treatment of cancer cachexia

   Kostas A. Papavassiliou, Athanasios G. Papavassiliou

3. Understanding patient-derived tumor organoid growth through an integrated imaging and mathematical modeling framework
   Einar Bjarki Gunnarsson, Seungil Kim, Brandon Choi, J. Karl Schmid, Karn Kaura, Heinz-Josef Lenz, Shannon M. Mumenthaler, Jasmine Foo

4. Decoding Patient Heterogeneity Influencing Radiation-Induced Brain Necrosis
   Ibrahim Chamseddine, Keyur Shah, Hoyeon Lee, Felix Ehret, Jan Schuemann, Alejandro Bertolet, Helen A. Shih, Harald Paganetti

5. The origin of novel traits in cancer
   Steven A. Frank, Itai Yanai

6. DN-ODE: Data-driven neural-ODE modeling for breast cancer tumor dynamics and progression-free survivals
   Jinlin Xiang, Bozhao Qi, Marc Cerou, Wei Zhao, Qi Tang

7. Drug tolerance and persistence in bacteria, fungi and cancer cells: Role of non-genetic heterogeneity
   Imane El Meouche, Paras Jain, Mohit Kumar Jolly, Jean-Pascal Capp

1. Early ctDNA kinetics as a dynamic biomarker of cancer treatment response
   Aaron Li, Emil Lou, Kevin Leder, Jasmine Foo

2. 3D histology reveals that immune response to pancreatic precancers is heterogeneous and depends on global pancreas structure
   Ashley L Kiemen, Cristina Almagro Perez, Valentina Matos Romero, André Forjaz, Alicia M Braxton, …, Arrate Munoz-Barrutia, Ralph H Hruban, Denis Wirtz

3. Integration of immune cell-target cell conjugate dynamics changes the time scale of immune control of cancer
   Qianci Yang, Arne Traulsen, Philipp Altrock

1. Mathematical Modelling of Cancer Treatments, Resistance, and Optimization

   Fields Institute, September 16 – 20

   Organizers: Renee Brady-Nicholls, Lisette de Pillis, Peter Kim, Peter Lee, & Gibin Powathil

   Summary: The aim of this workshop is to dive into how mathematical and computational modelling can be used to answer clinically relevant questions and enhance cancer treatment. The weeklong program will bring together clinicians, biomedical experts, experimentalists, and mathematicians to explore burning questions in multimodal treatment modelling, efficacy, optimization, drug resistance and clinical delivery. The workshop will feature the Coxeter Lecture Series by Natalia Komarova, as well as the Distinguished Lecture Series by Helen Byrne. We will also have talks from several experts in the field, as well as a poster session showcasing early career scientists.

The newsletter now has a dedicated homepage where we post the cover artwork for each issue. We encourage submissions that coincide with the release of a recent paper from your group. This week’s artwork:

Based on the paper: To modulate or to skip: De-escalating PARP inhibitor maintenance therapy in ovarian cancer using adaptive therapy published in Cell Systems

Artist: Maximilian Strobl (@StroblMAR), Kit Gallagher (@SciKit_G), Jeffrey West (@mathoncbro), Jill Gallaher (@jillagal), Mark Robertson-Tessi (@markrt_), Sandy Anderson (@ara_anderson)

Caption: PARP inhibitors have transformed ovarian cancer care, but many patients require dose adjustments or drug holidays due to toxicity. We integrated real-time microscopy and mathematical modeling to investigate whether adaptive therapy, which dynamically tailors treatment to the tumor dynamics, could help to reduce cumulative drug use. The image shows two of our simulations arranged as the two strands of a DNA helix, shattered by the emblematic double strand break induced by PARP inhibitors. The simulations (strands) compare two adaptive strategies: As the tumor responds and regrows under treatment (blue lines), doses are either modulated or skipped (shading and bars; with some artistic liberties). Our work suggests that dose modulation is superior to skipping due to a diminishing dose response and delayed cell kill, and demonstrates how adaptive therapy could enable de-escalating therapy in a personalized fashion.

Visit the mathematical oncology page to view jobs, meetings, and special issues. We will post new additions here, but the full list can found at mathematical-oncology.org.

1. Jobs

2. Conferences / Meetings

3. Special issues

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