PDE & Mechanistic Tumour Modelling
Population-level and patient-specific models of tumour growth and treatment response.
Overview
Mechanistic models based on reaction-diffusion PDEs capture the spatio-temporal dynamics of tumour proliferation, invasion, and necrosis. Combined with population-level mixed-effects inference (NLME), they enable virtual cohort simulations — a powerful tool for in-silico clinical trials.
Applications
- Soft-tissue sarcomas — retroperitoneal and extremity sarcomas under neo-adjuvant chemotherapy
- Renal tumours — growth kinetics under targeted therapy (sunitinib)
- Gliomas — diffuse low-grade glioma under radiotherapy/chemotherapy
Key methodological contributions
- Coupling of mechanistic growth laws with imaging-derived tumour descriptors
- Efficient adjoint-based parameter estimation on clinical CT/MRI data
- Population-level sensitivity analysis and virtual patient generation