Speaker
Description
Glioblastoma is the most common and deadliest primary brain tumour in adults, with a median survival of 15 months under the current standard of care \cite{Trager2020}. Its tumour microenvironment has been shown to be highly heterogeneous \cite{Karimi2023}, meaning the magnitude of cell-cell interactions might differ due to spatial differences. While ordinary differential equation models can be useful to analyze novel treatment strategies and run preliminary virtual clinical trials \cite{Mongeon_Craig_2025}, they do not easily allow for describing this spatial cell heterogeneity and its impact on treatment outcomes. To that end, new single-cell imaging modalities like imaging mass cytometry can be leveraged and integrated to computational agent-based models \cite{Surendran2023}. However, to effectively capture intra-tumoral dynamics, we have shown that care must be put into this integration and that model initialization must be done with a sufficient number of cells to provide biologically relevant predictions \cite{Mongeon2024}. Here, we propose a mechanistic reconstruction of homogeneous and heterogenous imaging mass cytometry data that captures first- and second-order spatial summary statistics. We then generate larger synthetic datasets from patient-specific glioblastoma biopsy samples using our algorithm and integrate them into an agent-based model to study the effect of tumour micro-environment spatial heterogeneity on glioblastoma treatment outcomes. Though our focus is on the incorporation of imaging mass cytometry data into an ABM, our technique has applications beyond this case study to other multi-type homogeneous and heterogeneous and point patterns.
Bibliography
@article{Trager2020,
title={Oncolytic Viruses for the Treatment of Metastatic Melanoma},
volume={21},
ISSN={1527-2729, 1534-6277},
url={http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11864-020-0718-2},
DOI={10.1007/s11864-020-0718-2},
number={4},
journal={Current Treatment Options in Oncology},
author={Trager, Megan H. and Geskin, Larisa J. and Saenger, Yvonne M.},
year={2020},
month={apr},
pages={26}
}
@article{Karimi2023,
title={Single-cell spatial immune landscapes of primary and metastatic brain tumours}, volume={614},
ISSN={0028-0836, 1476-4687},
url={https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05680-3},
DOI={10.1038/s41586-022-05680-3},
number={7948},
journal={Nature},
author={Karimi, Elham and Yu, Miranda W. and Maritan, Sarah M. and Perus, Lucas J. M. and Rezanejad, Morteza and Sorin, Mark and Dankner, Matthew and Fallah, Parvaneh and Doré, Samuel and Zuo, Dongmei and Fiset, Benoit and
Kloosterman, Daan J. and Ramsay, LeeAnn and Wei, Yuhong and Lam, Stephanie and Alsajjan, Roa and Watson, Ian R. and Roldan Urgoiti, Gloria and Park, Morag and Brandsma, Dieta and Senger, Donna L. and Chan, Jennifer A. and Akkari, Leila and Petrecca, Kevin and Guiot, Marie-Christine and Siegel, Peter M. and
Quail, Daniela F. and Walsh, Logan A.},
year={2023},
month={feb},
pages={555–563}
}
@article{Mongeon_Craig_2025,
title={Virtual Clinical Trial Reveals Significant Clinical Potential of
Targeting Tumor‐Associated Macrophages and Microglia to Treat Glioblastoma}, volume={14},
ISSN={2163-8306, 2163-8306},
url={https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp4.70033},
DOI={10.1002/psp4.70033},
number={7},
journal={CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology},
author={Mongeon, Blanche and Craig, Morgan},
year={2025},
month={july},
pages={1156–1167}
}
@article{Surendran2023,
title={Agent-Based Modelling Reveals the Role of the Tumor Microenvironment on the Short-Term Success of Combination Temozolomide/Immune Checkpoint Blockade to Treat Glioblastoma},
volume={387},
ISSN={00223565},
url={https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022356524170930},
DOI={10.1124/jpet.122.001571},
number={1},
journal={The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics},
author={Surendran, Anudeep and Jenner, Adrianne L. and Karimi, Elham and Fiset, Benoit and Quail, Daniela F. and Walsh, Logan A. and Craig, Morgan},
year={2023},
month={oct},
pages={66–77}
}
@article{Mongeon2024,
title={Spatial computational modelling illuminates the role of the tumour microenvironment for treating glioblastoma with immunotherapies},
volume={10},
ISSN={2056-7189},
url={https://www.nature.com/articles/s41540-024-00419-4},
DOI={10.1038/s41540-024-00419-4},
number={1},
journal={npj Systems Biology and Applications},
author={Mongeon, Blanche and Hébert-Doutreloux, Julien and Surendran, Anudeep and Karimi, Elham and Fiset, Benoit and Quail, Daniela F. and Walsh, Logan A. and Jenner, Adrianne L. and Craig, Morgan},
year={2024},
month={aug},
pages={91}
}
