Personalised medicine - optimal chemotherapy treatment

Cancer growth, the response to chemotherapy treatment, and the development of drug resistance are multi-scale phenomena involving spatial and temporal interactions at the intra-cellular level, the cellular level and the level of the microenvironment.

Professor Mark Chaplain and colleagues in the StAMBio Mathematical Biology research group have developed an in silico multi-scale, individual-based modelling approach that analyses the spatio-temporal dynamics of cancer cells, linking individual cell behaviour with the macroscopic behaviour of cell organisation and the microenvironment.

Working with colleagues in the Jacqui Wood Cancer Centre, Ninewells Hospital Dundee the group is using in vitro and in vivo experimental data to develop the silico model to describe the relationship between chemotherapy drug dosing regimens, including drug combinations, which can then be used to predict anti-tumour response and also the onset of drug resistance.

The ultimate aim of the in silico model is to inform the design of combination chemotherapies and provide optimal personalised medicine to cancer patients.