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NUMED - 2014

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Section: Research Program

Models for the analysis of efficacy data in oncology

Project-team positioning

The development of new drugs for oncology patients faces significant issues with a global attrition rate of 95 percents and only 40 percents of drug approval in phase III after successful phase II. As for meteorology, the analysis through modeling and simulation (MS), of time-course data related to anticancer drugs efficacy and/or toxicity constitutes a rational method for predicting drugs efficacy in patients. This approach, now supported by regulatory agencies such as the FDA, is expected to improve the drug development process and in consequence the treatment of cancer patients. A private company, Pharsight, has nowadays the leader team in the development of such modeling frameworks. In 2009, this team published a model describing tumor size time-course in more than one thousand colorectal cancer patients. This model was used in an MS framework to predict the outcome of a phase III clinical trials based on the analysis of phase II data. From 2009 to 2013, 12 published articles address similar analysis of different therapeutic indications such as lung, prostate, thyroid and renal cancer. A similar modeling activity is also proposed for the analysis of data in preclinical experiments, and in particular, experiments in mice. Animal experiments represent critical stages to decide if a drug molecule should be tested in humans. MS methods are considered as tools to better investigate the mechanisms of drug action and to potentially facilitate the transition towards the clinical phases of the drug development process. Our team has worked in the development of two modeling frameworks with application in both preclinical and clinical oncology. For the preclinical context, we have worked on the development of models focusing on the process of tumor angiogenesis, i.e. the formation of intra-tumoral blood vessels. At the clinical level, we have developed a model to predict tumor size dynamics in patients with low-grade glioma.

At Inria, several project-teams have developed similar efforts. The project-team BANG has a solid experience in the development of age-structured models of the cell cycle and tissue regulation of tumors with clinical applications for chronotherapy. BANG is also currently applying these types of partial differential equation (PDE) models to the study of leukemia through collaboration with the project-team DRACULA. Project-team MC2 has recently shown that the analysis, through a simplified PDE model of tumor growth and treatment response, of 3D imaging, could lead to correct prediction of tumor volume evolution in patients with pulmonary metastasis from thyroid cancer. Regarding specifically the modeling of brain tumors, project-team ASCLEPIOS has brought an important contribution towards personalized medicine in analyzing 3D data information from MRI with a multiscale model that describes the evolution of high grade gliomas in the brain. Their framework relies on the cancer physiopathological model that was mainly developed by Kristin Swanson and her group at the university of Washington.

Outside from Inria, we wish to mention here the work of the group of Florence Hubert in Marseille in the development of models with an interesting compromise between mathematical complexity and data availability. A national ANR project led by the team is expected to support the development of an MS methodology for the analysis of tumor size data in patients with metastases.

Results

Regarding our contribution in preclinical modeling, we have developed a model to analyze the dynamics of tumor progression in nude mice xenografted with HT29 or HCT116 colorectal cancer cells. This model, based on a system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), integrated the different types of tumor tissues, and in particular, the proliferating, hypoxic and necrotic tissues. Practically, in our experiment, tumor size was periodically measured, and percentages of hypoxic and necrotic tissue were assessed using immunohistochemistry techniques on tumor samples after euthanasia. In the proposed model, the peripheral non-hypoxic tissue proliferates according to a generalized-logistic equation where the maximal tumor size is represented by a variable called "carrying capacity". The ratio of the whole tumor size to the carrying capacity was used to define the hypoxic stress. As this stress increases, non-hypoxic tissue turns hypoxic. Hypoxic tissue does not stop proliferating, but hypoxia constitutes a transient stage before the tissue becomes necrotic. As the tumor grows, the carrying capacity increases owing to the process of angiogenesis (Ribba, Watkin et al. 2011). The model is shown to correctly predict tumor growth dynamics as well as percentages of necrotic and hypoxic tissues within the tumor.

Regarding our contribution in clinical oncology, we developed an ODE model based on the analysis of mean tumor diameter (MTD) time-course in low-grade glioma patients (Ribba, Kaloshi et al. 2012).

In this model, the tumor is composed of proliferative ($P$) and non-proliferative quiescent tissue ($Q$) expressed in millimeters. The proportion of proliferative tissue transitioning into quiescence is constant. The treatment directly eliminates proliferative cells by inducing lethal DNA damage while these cells progress through the cell cycle. The quiescent cells are also affected by the treatment and become damaged quiescent cells (${k}_{PQ}$). Damaged quiescent cells, when re-entering the cell cycle, can repair their DNA and become proliferative once again (transition from ${Q}_{P}$ to $P$) or can die due to unrepaired damages. We modeled the pharmacokinetics of the PCV chemotherapy using a kinetic-pharmacodynamic (K-PD) approach, in which drug concentration is assumed to decay according to an exponential function. In this model, we did not consider the three drugs separately. Rather, we assumed the treatment to be represented as a whole by a unique variable ($C$), which represents the concentration of a virtual drug encompassing the three chemotherapeutic components of the PCV regimen. We modeled the exact number of treatment cycles administered by setting the value of $C$ to 1 (arbitrary unit) at the initiation of each cycle(${T}_{Treat}$): $C\left(T={T}_{Treat}\right)=1$.

The resulting model is as follows:

 $\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \frac{dC}{dt}& =& -KDE×C\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{dP}{dt}& =& {\lambda }_{P}P\left(1-\frac{{P}^{☆}}{K}\right)+{k}_{{Q}_{p}P}{Q}_{p}-{k}_{PQ}P-\gamma ×C×KDE×P\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{dQ}{dt}& =& {k}_{PQ}P-\gamma ×C×KDE×Q\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{d{Q}_{p}}{dt}& =& \gamma ×C×KDE×Q-{k}_{{Q}_{p}P}{Q}_{p}-{\delta }_{{Q}_{p}}{Q}_{p}\hfill \end{array}$ (1)

We challenged this model with additional patient data. In particular, MTD time-course information from 24 patients treated with TMZ (subset of the 120 patients from SH) and 25 patients treated with radiotherapy (SH). Note that exactly the same K-PD approach was used to model treatment pharmacokinetic (including for radiotherapy). This choice, though not really realistic was adopted for simplicity reasons: the same model can be indifferently applied to the three different treatment modalities of LGG patients.

Collaborations

François Ducray and Jérôme Honnorat (Pierre Wertheimer Hospital in Lyon)

External support: grant INSERM PhysiCancer 2012 and Inria IPL MONICA