Funmurphys: the Blog

Computer Modeling of Cancer

If we can predict the weather, can we predict the course of a tumor? Vito Quaranta, professor of cancer biology at Vanderbilt, thinks so. So he and colleagues from Vanderbilt and the University of Dundee
are computer modeling cancer tumors to understand them better and eventually tailor individual treatments:

The investigators have focused on the events of invasion and metastasis (movement of a tumor to distant sites), Quaranta said, because these events mark "the critical transition of a tumor that in the end will be lethal for the patient." A tumor that does not penetrate the surrounding tissue can often be surgically removed with curative success.

"When a patient comes in with a tumor, we'd like to understand for that particular tumor, what are the chances that metastasis is going to occur," Quaranta said. "Does that patient need to be treated very aggressively, or not so aggressively""

Today, a tumor's size and shape are evaluated, but they can be poor indicators of invasive potential: a very small tumor can be highly invasive. Even "molecular signatures" – profiles of molecules that suggest how tumor cells will behave – are not entirely predictive, he added.

Quaranta and colleagues opted for a new approach – using the tools of mathematics to tackle the complex problem of cancer behavior.

The findings suggest that current chemotherapy approaches which create a harsh microenvironment in the tumor may leave behind the most aggressive and invasive tumor cells.

"In the immediate term we may be diminishing tumor burden, but the long term effect is to have a much nastier tumor than there was to begin with," Quaranta said. There is anecdotal evidence, he added, to support the idea that changes to the microenvironment result in a tumor with more or less invasive potential. Such manipulations of the microenvironment could offer new directions for cancer treatment, he said.