A COMPUTATIONAL MICROSCOPE FOR CANCER MICROENVIRONMENTS

The phenotype of a cancer cell the set of observable behavioral characteristics including its aggressiveness or pathogenicity its susceptibility to drug or radiation therapy its metabolic profile secreteome and many other attributes is not uniquely defined by it s genotype Rather it is an emergent property of a complex set of variables that involve chemical and mechanical microenvironmental cues genetic perturbations and the epigenetic state of the cell While great volumes of research have focused on understanding the oncogenic role of each factor individually compiling them into a holistic picture of cancer growth and progression remains a challenge SimBioSys Inc is developing new computational technologies integrating metabolomic transcriptomic and imaging data in order to construct in silico models of cancer metabolism within realistic spatially and chemically heterogeneous microenvironments At the core of this technology is a novel technique that models the competition for and sharing of metabolites between cells of different types and or phenotypes i e stem vs differentiated cancerous vs healthy etc Our intent is to develop a novel computational tool for biomedical researchers that integrates reaction diffusion and metabolic modeling with large omics and histology datasets to provide new insight into the behavior of cancers