Speaker: Prof. Jasmin Fisher, Professor of Computational Biology, University College London.
Title: “Cancer Digital Twins”
Cancer is a complex systemic disease driven by genetic and epigenetic aberrations that impact a multitude of signalling pathways operating in different cell types. The dynamic, evolving nature of the disease leads to tumour heterogeneity and an inevitable resistance to treatment, which poses considerable challenges for the design of therapeutic strategies to combat cancer. Digital twins for cancer tumours are emerging as a transformative tool in oncology to enable a more personalised and dynamic approach to cancer treatment. In this talk, Prof. Fisher will showcase a growing library of mechanistic, data-driven computational models, focused on the signalling pathways within tumour cells and their microenvironment for various types of cancer (e.g., triple-negative breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma and glioblastoma). These computational models are mechanistically interpretable, enabling us to understand and anticipate inevitable resistance mechanisms and project patient-specific treatment plans that counteract the forces of clonal selection and phenotypic plasticity that ultimately lead to treatment relapse. Prof. Fisher will demonstrate how these models are initialised with genetic data to create digital twins for individual patient tumours and predict optimised treatment strategies and outcomes for their evolving disease. The lab anticipates their cancer digital twins to be a starting point for a powerful and clinically deployable software application to optimise treatment plans and outcomes for hard-to-treat cancers.
Host: Dr Sarah Teichmann