Speaker
Description
Glioblastoma is characterized by spatial heterogeneity and severe hypoxia, which shape the immune response and contribute to poor therapeutic outcomes \cite{Bayona2026}. In this work, we reproduce a multiscale tumor–immune model \cite{Gong2017} and develop an agent-based model with PhysiCell \cite{Ghaffarizadeh2018} that captures key biological features driving glioblastoma progression.
The model incorporates two cancer cell phenotypes, three T cell subtypes, and vascular points; together with oxygen, the cytokine IL-2 and the chemokine CXCL12 diffusion. Agents migrate, proliferate, and interact locally, while vascular points act as oxygen sources and T cell entry points. Furthermore, the model incorporates vascular occlusion resulting from increased pressure as the tumor grows, which halts oxygen secretion and immune recruitment.
Preliminary results indicate that the initial density and spatial distribution of vascular points are determinants of tumor progression and lymphocyte efficacy. We observed that specific vascular configurations enhance T cell infiltration, leading to a measurable reduction of tumor growth. These findings suggest that vascular distribution could serve as a predictive marker for treatment response. This work provides a platform for exploring immune–tumor dynamics in glioblastoma and sets the stage for future work assessing immunotherapeutic strategies.
Bibliography
@article{Bayona2026,
title = {Tumor microenvironment in glioblastoma: The central role of the hypoxic–necrotic core},
volume = {639},
ISSN = {0304-3835},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.canlet.2025.218216},
DOI = {10.1016/j.canlet.2025.218216},
journal = {Cancer Letters},
publisher = {Elsevier BV},
author = {Bayona, Clara and Ranđelović, Teodora and Ochoa, Ignacio},
year = {2026},
month = feb,
}
@article{Gong2017,
title = {A computational multiscale agent-based model for simulating spatio-temporal tumour immune response to PD1 and PDL1 inhibition},
volume = {14},
ISSN = {1742-5662},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2017.0320},
DOI = {10.1098/rsif.2017.0320},
number = {134},
journal = {Journal of The Royal Society Interface},
publisher = {The Royal Society},
author = {Gong, Chang and Milberg, Oleg and Wang, Bing and Vicini, Paolo and Narwal, Rajesh and Roskos, Lorin and Popel, Aleksander S.},
year = {2017},
month = sep,
}
@article{Ghaffarizadeh2018,
title = {PhysiCell: An open source physics-based cell simulator for 3-D multicellular systems},
volume = {14},
ISSN = {1553-7358},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005991},
DOI = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005991},
number = {2},
journal = {PLOS Computational Biology},
publisher = {Public Library of Science (PLoS)},
author = {Ghaffarizadeh, Ahmadreza and Heiland, Randy and Friedman, Samuel H. and Mumenthaler, Shannon M. and Macklin, Paul},
editor = {Poisot, Timothée},
year = {2018},
month = feb,
}
