Mathematical Modelling of Microtube Driven Invasion of Glioma – Thomas Hillen

Abstract: Malignant gliomas are highly invasive brain tumors. Recent attention has focused on their capacity for network-driven invasion, whereby mitotic events can be followed by the migration of nuclei along long thin cellular protrusions, termed tumour microtubes (TM). Here I develop a mathematical model that describes this microtube-driven invasion of gliomas. I show that scaling limits lead to well known glioma models as special cases such as go-or-grow models, the PI model of Swanson, and the anisotropic model of Swan. I compute the invasion speed and I use the model to fit experiments of cancer resection and regrowth in the mouse brain.
(Joint work with N. Loy, K.J. Painter, R. Thiessen, A. Shyntar).