The study of multicellular systems such as tumors, tissues, or organoids is critical to improve
our understanding of the complex dynamics exhibited by these systems. For instance,
the emergence of resistant cancer cells is process that manifest at many different
scales from the molecular, to the population level. Multicellular systems such as tumors
are complex adaptive systems an thus are no reducible to classical analytical techniques.
Nevertheless, multi-scale simulations can used study these systems by integrating
models of processes taking place at these different scales. In this way, multi-scale
model simulations provide a genotype-to-phenotype mapping framework, that allow the
exploration of genetic variations and their interaction with changing environmental conditions.
In the Computational Biology Group we are extending a multiscale modelling framework combining agent-based and models of signaling pathways (PhysiCell/PhysiBoSS),
to link pathways’ activity and cells’ phenotypes to physical interactions among
cells and with their environment. In this seminar, I will introduce the current status of
our multi-scale framework, as well as the ongoing development of a novel extension to
integrate metabolic models within the agent-based framework. This novel feature will
allow to study the intersection between cell metabolism and their microenvironment, at
the population
