This week in MathOnco 350

Evolutionary double-bind, MRI math models, pharmacometric models, and more...

“This week in Mathematical Oncology” — Nov 6, 2025

> mathematical-oncology.org

From the editor:

Hello from Moffitt, where the IMO Workshop is in full effect. Read more about the history of the workshop here:

https://imoworkshop.org/

Enjoy,

Jeffrey West
jeffrey.west@moffitt.org

1. Evolutionary double-bind treatment using radiotherapy and NK cell-based immunotherapy in prostate cancer
   Kimberly A Luddy, Jeffrey West, Mark Robertson-Tessi, Bina Desai, …, Robert A Gatenby, Joel S Brown, Alexander RA Anderson, Cliona O’Farrelly

2. Investigating the Limits of Predictability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Based Mathematical Models of Tumor Growth
   Megan F. LaMonica, Thomas E. Yankeelov, David A. Hormuth II

3. Effective Visualizations Using “vachette” to Assess and Communicate Pharmacometric Model Results
   Jos Lommerse, Anna Largajolli, James Craig, Nele Plock, S. Y. Amy Cheung & Jeffrey R. Sachs

4. Tissue and cellular spatiotemporal dynamics in colon aging
   Aidan C. Daly, Francesco Cambuli, Tarmo Äijö, Britta Lötstedt, …, Hemali Phatnani, Richard Bonneau, Aviv Regev, Sanja Vickovic

5. Ligand discrimination in immune cells: Signal processing insights into immune dysfunction in ER+ breast cancer
   Adina Matache, Joao Rodrigues Lima-Junior, Maxim Kuznetsov, Konstancja Urbaniak, Sergio Branciamore, Andrei S. Rodin, Peter P. Lee, Russell C. Rockne

6. Speaking mathematical models into existence
   Ernesto A.B.F. Lima, David A. Hormuth, Thomas E. Yankeelov

1. Cell migration sculpts evolutionary dynamics favouring therapy resistance in lung cancer
   Ajay Bhargava, Xiao Fu, Sasha Bailey, Yutaka Naito, …, James McGinty, Paul A. Bates, Charles Swanton, Erik Sahai

1. Tenured or Tenure-Track Faculty Position, Fall 2026 – Computational Medicine, UT Austin

2. Lecturer at UCL centre linking the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering and the Cancer Institute.

The newsletter now has a dedicated homepage where we post the cover artwork for each issue, curated by Maximilian Strobl, Sarah Groves, and Veronika Hofmann. We encourage submissions that coincide with the release of a recent paper from your group. This week’s artwork:

Based on the paper: Evolutionary double-bind treatment using radiotherapy and NK cell-based immunotherapy in prostate cancer published in International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics

Artist: Simon Fay (webpage)

Caption: Evolution-informed therapies exploit evolutionary consequences of drug resistance to inhibit treatment-resistance and prolong time to progression. One strategy, termed an evolutionary double-bind, uses an initial therapy to elicit a specific adaptive response by cancer cells, which is then selectively targeted by a follow-on therapy. This was inspired by “predator facilitation” seen with owls and snakes and illustrated here. Dessert rodents adapt to predation from owls by hiding. This in turn increases the hunting efficiency of dessert snakes that reside in the brush. Although the concept of an evolutionary double-bind has long been hypothesized in cancer, it has not been measured. In this paper, we present the first example of a quantifiable double-bind: radiation therapy with NK cells. RT induces lethal double-strand DNA breaks, but cancer cells adapt. While this increases resistance to DNA damaging agents, it also enhances expression of NK cell ligands creating an obvious choice for a double-bind strategy.

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.

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