This page includes Agent-based three-dimensional cancer-tumour-microenvironment (TME) models were developed within the scope of the TÜBİTAK 1001 Project with the number 120S987.
In this study, the tumour and tumour microenvironment in four tissues (brain, lung, liver, lymph nodes) was mathematically modelled using PhysiCell/BioFVM and PhysiCell Studio. More than ten thousand individual cells and more than fifty substrates are implemented in the models for each tissue type including their biological and physical properties according to literature information in addition to spatial and scRNA data collected from healthy and tumour tissues. In this way Cancer-TME is reconstructed at the individual agent level, that can reflect heterogeneity among different cell types even between individual cells, thanks to PhysiCell’s agent-based-continuum structure. Overview of the project was presented at HIBIT2024 (poster).
Each model was simulated under a variety of conditions:
- Healthy tissue
- Tumour growth in tissue
- Glucose availability (low, medium, high)
- Oxygen availability (low, medium, high)
- Cell mobility (low, medium, high as a proxy of metastasis potential)
- Cell division rate (low, mediım high as a proxy of effects of mutations on regulation of cell division)
- CAR-T therapy (small, medium, large number of CAR-T cell administration)
- CAR-T therapy (under low-medium-high glucose conditions)
- ICI therapy (administration of ICI agent at early- advanced-very late stages of tumor progression)
- ICI therapy (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly administration of ICI agent)
- ICI therapy (under low-medium-high glucose conditions)