An integrated biological and computational tumor model

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

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Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cancer continues to be a nationwide concern. Despite extensive years of research in the field of tumor biology, the behavior of malignant tumors remain poorly understood. An area of increasing interest among clinicians and biotechnology scientists is the design of advanced diagnostic tools that are capable of early cancer detection and improved treatment matching. Mathematical models of tumor growth and therapy response show a promising future as innovative diagnostic tools for cancer treatment. This project will incorporate a continuum scale mathematical model to investigate and predict quantitatively the dependency of tumor-induced angiogenesis on the spatial-temporal distribution of VEGF and HIF-1 alpha tumor promoting factors, and tumor cell population in three-dimensional tumors. These objectives will be met by 1) developing a three-dimensional in-vivo tumor biological model to induce tumor growth and angiogenesis, and to generate experimental parameter values; 2) integrating experimental parameters into the computational model and simulate tumor-induced angiogenesis; 3) calibrating and optimizing the computational model to correlate simulation results with in-vivo observations. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]