Back to Search
Start Over
From cells to tissue: How cell scale heterogeneity impacts glioblastoma growth and treatment response.
- Source :
-
PLoS computational biology [PLoS Comput Biol] 2020 Feb 26; Vol. 16 (2), pp. e1007672. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Feb 26 (Print Publication: 2020). - Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- Glioblastomas are aggressive primary brain tumors known for their inter- and intratumor heterogeneity. This disease is uniformly fatal, with intratumor heterogeneity the major reason for treatment failure and recurrence. Just like the nature vs nurture debate, heterogeneity can arise from intrinsic or environmental influences. Whilst it is impossible to clinically separate observed behavior of cells from their environmental context, using a mathematical framework combined with multiscale data gives us insight into the relative roles of variation from different sources. To better understand the implications of intratumor heterogeneity on therapeutic outcomes, we created a hybrid agent-based mathematical model that captures both the overall tumor kinetics and the individual cellular behavior. We track single cells as agents, cell density on a coarser scale, and growth factor diffusion and dynamics on a finer scale over time and space. Our model parameters were fit utilizing serial MRI imaging and cell tracking data from ex vivo tissue slices acquired from a growth-factor driven glioblastoma murine model. When fitting our model to serial imaging only, there was a spectrum of equally-good parameter fits corresponding to a wide range of phenotypic behaviors. When fitting our model using imaging and cell scale data, we determined that environmental heterogeneity alone is insufficient to match the single cell data, and intrinsic heterogeneity is required to fully capture the migration behavior. The wide spectrum of in silico tumors also had a wide variety of responses to an application of an anti-proliferative treatment. Recurrent tumors were generally less proliferative than pre-treatment tumors as measured via the model simulations and validated from human GBM patient histology. Further, we found that all tumors continued to grow with an anti-migratory treatment alone, but the anti-proliferative/anti-migratory combination generally showed improvement over an anti-proliferative treatment alone. Together our results emphasize the need to better understand the underlying phenotypes and tumor heterogeneity present in a tumor when designing therapeutic regimens.<br />Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
- Subjects :
- Animals
Cell Proliferation
Computational Biology
Computer Simulation
Humans
Kinetics
Male
Mice, Inbred NOD
Models, Theoretical
Phenotype
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Brain Neoplasms diagnostic imaging
Brain Neoplasms physiopathology
Glioblastoma diagnostic imaging
Glioblastoma physiopathology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1553-7358
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- PLoS computational biology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 32101537
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007672