Speaker
Description
Oncolytic virotherapy uses engineered viruses to selectively infect and destroy tumour cells. Despite some clinical successes, the spatial dynamics governing viral spread in solid tumours remain poorly understood. The integration of agent-based models, continuum models and hybrid approaches has been particularly valuable for capturing the multi-scale and stochastic nature of this biological system. In this talk, we compare agent-based and continuum models to assess when the macroscopic model captures the essential behaviour of the underlying discrete system.
In a baseline setting, both models predict travelling waves and show good qualitative agreement. However, oscillatory dynamics may emerge in the discrete model, sometimes leading to eradication of the infection and, in some cases, complete tumour clearance not captured by the continuum formulation \cite{m25}. While Poissonian tumour control probability is often used to estimate extinction events, this approach may fail when a strong immune response is present \cite{m24}. Moreover, when viral diffusion and tumour cell motility are spatially constrained, the continuum model predicts infection failure, whereas the discrete system may still sustain viral spread \cite{m23,m24}.
These findings illustrate how the transition from microscopic to macroscopic descriptions may introduce non-trivial discrepancies, emphasizing the need for caution when using continuum approximations to interpret multi-scale biological dynamics.
Bibliography
@ARTICLE{m23,
author = {Morselli, David and Delitala, Marcello Edoardo and Frascoli, Federico},
title = {Agent-based and continuum models for spatial dynamics of infection by oncolytic viruses},
year = {2023},
journal = {Bulletin of Mathematical Biology},
volume = {85},
number = {10},
doi = {10.1007/s11538-023-01192-x}
}
@unpublished{m24,
author = {Morselli, David and Delitala, Marcello Edoardo and Jenner, Adrianne L. and Frascoli, Federico},
title = {A hybrid discrete-continuum modelling approach for the interactions of the immune system with oncolytic viral infections},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2404.06459},
note = {Preprint}
}
@unpublished{m25,
author = {Morselli, David and Frascoli, Federico and Delitala, Marcello Edoardo },
title = {The role of viral dynamics and infectivity in models of oncolytic virotherapy for tumours with different motility},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2509.24522},
note = {Accepted in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology}
}
