Mesoscopic cancer modeling: applications to chemotherapy and immunotherapy

C.A. CONDAT

Petrópolis

Encuentro; Encontro em Modelagem Matemática do Crescimento Tumoral; 2014

Laboratorio Nacional de Computación Científica (Brasil)

Mesoscopic cancer modeling: applications to chemotherapy and immunotherapy Carlos A. Condat IFEG ? CONICET and FaMAF, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina Although an enormous effort has been made in the field of cancer therapies, the results are still not satisfactory. Mathematical modeling may help us to better understand how to optimize antitumor treatments. Here we will present a mesoscopic model to study the impact of quiescent cells on the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Our simulations show that the resistance of quiescent cells is enough to reactivate cancer growth due to accelerated repopulation after each dose is applied, eventually causing chemotherapy to fail even in the absence of acquired resistance. Immunotherapy, on the other hand, has shown some striking successes, but there remain many aspects of the interaction between the tumor and the immune system that are not well understood. We have adapted our mesoscopic model to describe the effects of lymphocyte activity on a growing tumor. In particular, we find that, although immune cell activity is efficient to destroy tumor cells, it cannot slow the onset of invasive processes. We also found that the presence of a messenger molecule that guides lymphocytes towards the tumor does not critically enhance the immune response, while lymphocytes that block tumor cell migration contribute to limit cell expansion and could have a significant therapeutic impact.