Abstract

Understanding how vascular networks deliver nutrients and chemotherapy to solid tumours, how these networks evolve and how they may be manipulated to improve patient outcomes remain a major focus of cancer research. Such knowledge is important accurately to predict a tumour’s response to radiotherapy and for establishing whether a particular patient’s response can be enhanced by treatment with vascular targeting agents. Mathematical and computational models have the potential to provide valuable insight into the biophysical mechanisms that regulate tumour blood flow, transport and vascular remodelling, and a variety of models have been proposed. In this talk, I will explain how integrating data from in vitro and in vivo experiments within multiscale computational models can be used: (i) to propose new mechanisms for tumour hypoxia, and (ii) to characterise the morphology of vascular networks.