Mathematical modeling of the synergistic interplay of radiotherapy and immunotherapy in anti-cancer treatments.

Introduction: While radiotherapy has long been recognized for its ability to directly ablate cancer cells through necrosis or apoptosis, radiotherapy-induced abscopal effect suggests that its impact extends beyond local tumor destruction thanks to immune response. Cellular proliferation and necrosis have been extensively studied using mathematical models that simulate tumor growth, such as Gompertz law, and the radiation effects, such as the linear-quadratic model. However, the effectiveness of radiotherapy-induced immune responses may vary among patients due to individual differences in radiation sensitivity and other factors.

Computational Approach for Spatially Fractionated Radiation Therapy (SFRT) and Immunological Response in Precision Radiation Therapy.

The field of precision radiation therapy has seen remarkable advancements in both experimental and computational methods. Recent literature has introduced various approaches such as Spatially Fractionated Radiation Therapy (SFRT). This unconventional treatment, demanding high-precision radiotherapy, has shown promising clinical outcomes.

Forecasting Individual Patients' Best Time for Surgery in Colon-Rectal Cancer by Tumor Regression during and after Neoadjuvant Radiochemotherapy.

The standard treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy before surgery. For those patients experiencing a complete clinical response after the treatment, a watch-and-wait strategy with close monitoring may be practicable. In this respect, the identification of biomarkers of the response to therapy is extremely important.

Dynamical Synergy of Drug Combinations during Cancer Chemotherapy.

Synergistic drug combinations often provide effective strategies to increase treatment efficacy and, during therapy, it is a time-dependent process. Data for colorectal and lung cancer in vivo were used for the phenomenological study of dynamical synergy during treatments. The proposed approach takes into consideration tumor regrowth by macroscopic laws.

Combination of Interleukin-6, C-Reactive Protein and Procalcitonin Values as Predictive Index of Sepsis in Course of Fever Episode in Adult Haematological Patients: Observational and Statistical Study.

Haematological patients represent a vulnerable population to opportunistic infections, mainly due to the disease itself and chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. The level of immune suppression strongly increases the importance of timely antibiotic treatment in order to prevent sepsis-related mortality. During the initial fever episode, serum biomarkers are usually used to estimate the probability of blood stream infection prior to the results of microbial diagnosis.

Tumor Volume Regression during and after Radiochemotherapy: A Macroscopic Description.

Tumor volume regression during and after chemo and radio therapy is a useful information for clinical decisions. Indeed, a quantitative, patient oriented, description of the response to treatment can guide towards the modification of the scheduled doses or the evaluation of the best time for surgery. We propose a macroscopic algorithm which permits to follow quantitatively the time evolution of the tumor volume during and after radiochemotherapy.

A Novel Radiotherapeutic Approach to Treat Bulky Metastases Even From Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Its Rationale and a Look at the Reliability of the Linear-Quadratic Model to Explain Its Radiobiological Effects.

Introduction: Metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is a very rare condition. The lack of definition of an oligometastatic subgroup means that there is no consensus for its treatment, unlike the mucosal head and neck counterpart. Like the latter, the cutaneous form is able to develop bulky tumor masses.

C-Reactive Protein Monitoring and Clinical Presentation of Fever as Predictive Factors of Prolonged Febrile Neutropenia and Blood Culture Positivity after Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation-Single-Center Real-Life Experience.

Background: Febrile neutropenia (FN) is a medical emergency that requires urgent evaluation, timely administration of empiric broad-spectrum antibiotics and careful monitoring in order to optimize the patient's outcome, especially in the setting of both allogeneic and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (ASCT).

Methods: In this real-life retrospective study, a total of 49 consecutive episodes of FN were evaluated in 40 adult patients affected by either multiple myeloma (thirty-eight) or lymphoma (eleven), following ASCT, with nine patients having fever in both of the tandem transplantations.

Results: Febrile neutropenia occurred a median of 7 days from ASCT.

Non-Homogeneous Tumor Growth and Its Implications for Radiotherapy: A Phenomenological Approach.

Tumor regrowth and heterogeneity are important clinical parameters during radiotherapy, and the probability of treatment benefit critically depends on the tumor progression pattern in the interval between the fractional irradiation treatments. We propose an analytic, easy-to-use method to take into account clonal subpopulations with different specific growth rates and radiation resistances. The different strain regrowth effects, as described by Gompertz law, require a dose-boost to reproduce the survival probability of the corresponding homogeneous system and for uniform irradiation.

Unified approach to growth and aging in biological, technical and biotechnical systems.

Complex systems, in many different scientific sectors, show coarse-grain properties with simple growth laws with respect to fundamental microscopic algorithms. We propose a classification scheme of growth laws which includes human aging, tumor (and/or tissue) growth, logistic and generalized logistic growth and the aging of technical devices. The proposed classification permits to evaluate the aging/failure of combined new bio-technical "manufactured products", where part of the system evolves in time according to biological-mortality laws and part according to technical device behaviors.

Tumor growth instability and its implications for chemotherapy.

Optimal delivery of chemotherapy intensity is dependent on host- and tumor-specific characteristics. In this article, the chemotherapy late intensity schedule is revised to account for tumor growth instability, where a small tumor cell fraction emerges that exhibits a higher proliferation rate than the parent strain. Modeling this instability as simplified two-population dynamics, we find that: (a) if this instability precedes the onset of treatment, the slope of the linear increase of the drug concentration for the standard "Norton-Simon late intensity schedule" changes and the initial value of the dose strongly depends on the ratio of the two tumor cell populations and on their distinct growth rates; and (b) if the instability trails the initial treatment, the effective chemotherapeutic drug concentration changes as well.