Secondary tumors in the lung:

The mathematical models describing the growth of secondary in the lungs have now settled and are well understood. The main focus of the year was to keep on using these models on patient data. New clinical case were selected by clinicians from the Institut Bergonié, there are currently under study. The model is currently able to reproduce the growth observed on 5 clinical cases. In 2011, various improvements to the calibration algorithms were made. The initial seeding of the algorithms was a weak point of the procedure. This has been much improved using a genetic algorithm. A complete rewrite of the routines was done to improve their versatility and efficiency. Previously, the numerical simulations and calibration were performed in 2D (clinicians selected the most relevant slice showing the evolution of the tumor). Work is now ongoing to switch to full 3D computations and calibration.

Breast cancer modeling:

In collaboration with the University of Houston and the Methodist Hospital, a new mathematical model describing the growth of breast cancer has been developed. This multi-scale model takes many aspects of the disease into account and allows to study the interplays between the various mechanisms responsible for the evolution of the tumor.

Modeling glioblastomas:

In 2011, a hierarchy of models describing the growth of brain tumors was developed (and described in a submitted paper) in collaboration with University of Alabama at Birmingham. As we wished to obtain models that could be calibrated from patient data and yet be reasonably accurate, we believe that these models are suitable trade-offs between the simplicity of the SwansonÕs model (the only one used on patient data of brain tumors so far) and the accuracy of more complex models (that cannot really produce quantitative results). In particular, two models were built. The first one allows to study the efficacy of anti-angiogenic therapies. It seems to predict that the efficacy of these treatments is limited, this could be confirmed by a world-wide ongoing clinical study. The second model has been validated and we are trying to recover its parameters for a patient in 3D (which is a rather unique initiative to our knowledge).

Modelling of electrochemotherapy : Two articles related to the electrical cell modelling have been done ( [58] , [54] ) . The first one deals with the influence of the ionic fluxes on the transmembrane voltage potential and on the cell volume. The main insight of the results consists in linking the transmembrane potential with the cell volume: it has been observed experimentally that cells with a low voltage potential do divide, whereas cells with high voltage potential do not, and the obtained relationship between voltage potential and cell volume can provide an explanation. The second article deals with a new model of cell electroporation essentially based on the experimental results of the I.G.R. In this paper we describe precisely the model, which takes into account the main experimental results in the electroporation process, and we present a variationnal formulation inherent to the model that leads to new efficient schemes in order to numerically solve the involved P.D.E.