Mini workshop in Oxford

Today Marcus Tindall has organised a mini symposium (for lack of a better name) for me and the guys here working on mathematical models of cancer to get to know each other. I have given a very small presentation [PDF] (<30m) that covers stuff I presented before.

From the CMB I got to know the work of:

• Philip Murray, who has created a CA model to study the role of the cell cycle in tumours and that is now trying to obtain a continuous model that displays the same behaviour.
• Alex Fletcher who studies hypoxia in tumour development at the sub-cellular scale.
• Matt Johnston who works with W. Bodmer (whose game theory models have inspired my own work) to study the dynamics of cell populations in a colon crypt in colorectal cancer. His model shows how a homeostatic population could explode by slightly altering some of the paramers.
• Natasha Li who collaborates with Gatenby to study, using Cellular Automaton and continuous models, the role of glycolysis in tumour invasion and the influence of the stromal environment. This is specially relevant to me since it is one of my two main lines of work at the moment. She mention in her talk that glycolytic cells are especially sensitive to glucose deprivation.
• Rebecca Carter works on multiscale models of fluid and drug transportation in tumours.
• Marcus Tindall gave a brief introduction to his multiscale model of interaction between the cell cycle and cell density.

The presentations were all quite short but I hope to hear more from these people in the coming days.