Towards the Design of a Patient-Specific Virtual Tumour

Abstract

The design of a patient-specific virtual tumour is an important step towards Personalized Medicine. However this requires to capture the description of many key events of tumour development, including angiogenesis, matrix remodelling, hypoxia, and cell state heterogeneity that will all influence the tumour growth kinetics and degree of tumour invasiveness. To that end, an integrated hybrid and multiscale approach has been developed based on data acquired on a preclinical mouse model as a proof of concept. Fluorescence imaging is exploited to build case-specific virtual tumours. Numerical simulations show that the virtual tumour matches the characteristics and spatiotemporal evolution of its real counterpart. We achieved this by combining image analysis and physiological modelling to accurately described the evolution of different tumour cases over a month. The development of such models is essential since a dedicated virtual tumour would be the perfect tool to identify the optimum therapeutic strategies that would make Personalized Medicine truly reachable and achievable.