Section: Application Domains

Introduction

The team has two main application-driven research axes. Applicative axis 1 focuses on cancer, an application on which almost all team members work, with various approaches. A main focus of the team is to study cancer as a Darwinian evolutionary phenomenon in phenotype-structured cell populations. Optimal control methods take into account the two main pitfalls of clinical cancer therapeutics, namely unwanted toxic side effects in healthy cell populations and drug resistance in cancer cell populations. Other studies concern telomere shortening, and multi-scale models. Applicative axis 2 is devoted to growth, evolution and regeneration in populations and tissues. It involves protein aggregation and fragmentation models for neurodegenerative diseases (prion, Alzheimer), organ modeling, mainly of the liver, its damages induced by toxic molecules, and its regeneration after toxic insult. Newcomers in this applicative field are epidemiological modeling of propagation of insect vector-borne diseases by reaction-diffusion equations and of their optimal control, bacterial growth and wound healing.