Section: Research Program

Introduction

We are working in the context of data-driven medicine against cancer. We aim at coupling mathematical models with data to address relevant challenges for biologists and clinicians in order for instance to improve our understanding in cancer biology and pharmacology, assist the development of novel therapeutic approaches or develop personalized decision-helping tools for monitoring the disease and evaluating therapies.

More precisely, our research on mathematical oncology is three-fold:

• Axis 1: Tumor modeling for patient-specific simulations: Clinical monitoring. Numerical markers from imaging data. Radiomics.

• Axis 2: Bio-physical modeling for personalized therapies: Electroporation from cells to tissue. Radiotherapy.

• Axis 3: Quantitative cancer modeling for biological and preclinical studies: Biological mechanisms. Metastatic dissemination. Pharmacometrics.

In the first axis, we aim at producing patient-specific simulations of the growth of a tumor or its response to treatment starting from a series of images. We hope to be able to offer a valuable insight on the disease to the clinicians in order to improve the decision process. This would be particularly useful in the cases of relapses or for metastatic diseases.

The second axis aims at modeling biophysical therapies like radiotherapies, but also thermo-ablations, radio-frequency ablations or electroporation that play a crucial role in the case of a relapse or for a metastatic disease, which is precisely the clinical context where the techniques of axis 1 will be applied.

The third axis, even if not directly linked to clinical perspectives, is essential since it is a way to better understand and model the biological reality of cancer growth and the (possibly complex) effects of therapeutic intervention. Modeling in this case also helps to interpret the experimental results and improve the accuracy of the models used in Axis 1. Technically speaking, some of the computing tools are similar to those of Axis 1.