Tmod-13. simulating patterns of recurrence following ischemia in brain tumors

Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive primary brain tumor with median survival of 14 months from diagnosis. Following resection, GBM recurrence most often occurs locally but can recur distally. Experimentally, hypoxia has been seen to drive infiltrative growth of glioma cells, but its clinical effects are not well understood. However, a recent paper demonstrated that GBM patients with perioperative ischemia are more likely to recur distally than those without, 61% vs 19%. While this is convincing evidence that hypoxia is involved in generating distant recurrences, it does not fully answer the question regarding the difference between tumors that do or do not recur distally. We hypothesize that individual tumor growth kinetics may provide another part of the answer to this question. To investigate this question we utilized a previously developed spatio-temporal bio-mathematical model for glioma proliferation and invasion that encapsulates the complex interactions between tumor tissue and vasculature. We simulated multiple tumors defined by their growth kinetics as well as differing extents of perioperative ischemia. The model suggests a distal recurrence will occur following perioperative ischemia if a large enough proportion of the remaining tumor cells become hypoxic as they migrate through the ischemic region. Hypoxic cells favor migration to proliferation, supporting the hypothesis that they migrate across ischemic regions without being detected. Once c...
Source: Neuro-Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: TUMOR MODELS Source Type: research