The "Oncosimulator": a multilevel, clinically oriented simulation system of tumor growth and organism response to therapeutic schemes. Towards the clinical evaluation of in silico oncology

Abstract

The "Oncosimulator" is at the same time a concept of multilevel integrative cancer and (treatment affected) normal tissue biology, an algorithmic construct and a software tool which aims at supporting the clinician in the process of optimizing cancer treatment on the patient individualized basis. Additionally it is a platform for better understanding and exploring the natural phenomenon of cancer as well as training doctors and interested patients alike. In order to achieve all of these goals it has to undergo a thorough clinical optimization and validation process. This is one of the goals of the European Commission funded integrated project "ACGT: Advancing Clinicogenomic Trials on Cancer". Nephroblastoma (Wilms' tumor) and breast cancer have been selected to serve as two paradigms to clinically specify and evaluate the "Oncosimulator" as well as the emerging domain of in silico oncology.

An advanced discrete state–discrete event multiscale simulation model of the response of a solid tumor to chemotherapy: Mimicking a clinical study

“…cell necrosis following a prolonged residence of a tumor cell in the G0 phase etc.) (Duechting and Vogelsaenger, 1981;Ginsberg et al, 1993;Stamatakos et al, 2002Stamatakos et al, , 2006aStamatakos et al, , 2006bStamatakos et al, , 2007Dionysiou et al, 2004, Dionysiou and Stamatakos, 2006Deisboeck et al, 2009). State transitions can be decided by making use of several possible "decision calculators" such as cytokinetic diagrams, agent-based techniques etc.…”

IMENSE: An e-infrastructure environment for patient specific multiscale data integration, modelling and clinical treatment

“…The Oncosimulator [16] is an advanced information system, developed by the EU FP6 ACGT project, which aims to simulate the response of tumours and affected normal tissues to therapeutic schemes based on clinical, imaging, histopathological and molecular data of a given cancer patient, in order to optimize cancer treatment on a patientindividualized basis. While Oncosimulator itself is not a unified environment for data sharing and analysis, it will be integrated with the IMENSE system via a workflow.…”

Developing a European grid infrastructure for cancer research: vision, architecture, and services

“…The most critical biological phenomena (e.g. metabolism, cell cycling, geometrical growth or shrinkage of the tumour, cell survival, following irradiation or chemotherapeutic treatment, necrosis, apoptosis) will be thus spatiotemporally simulated using a variety of clinical, radiobiological, pharmacodynamic, molecular and imaging data [7].…”