Health & Physiology
Mathematical modeling and tumor avatars: What’s the link?
We introduce a new approach for designing personalized treatment for colorectal cancer patients, by combining patient-derived samples and mathematical modeling. This unique strategy is tailored specifically to individual patients, as we go from bench to bedside and back.

Colorectal cancer figures among the most common and deadly cancers worldwide. With current advances in treatment strategies, a strong need for smarter therapies remains. Treatment options are especially limited for late-stage colorectal cancer patients, relying mainly on chemotherapy, known as FOLFOXIRI. However, over time this treatment modality induces resistance in most patients, which makes the outcome very poor and the 5-year survival rate of only 15% for late colorectal cancer. It is generally known that the use of one single drug to treat cancer results in loss of efficacy over time, also known as resistance emergence. Therefore, instead of prescribing only one drug, oncologists generally treat their patients with a combination of drugs that target different signaling pathways in the cell, to improve the response. But it is extremely difficult to identify optimal drug mixtures, as the number of combinatorial possibilities is infinite. For example, if we need to test 10 drugs, each at two different doses, we will have 210 different possibilities.
Original Article:
Next read: A cup of green tea can solve many problems! by Monika Stankova
Edited by:
Margaux Héritier , Senior Scientific Editor
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