| Contents |
| Diffuse low-grade gliomas are rare and slowly growing tumours that transform inexorably into more aggressive forms. Optimizing treatments, for example with modeling, could help to delay the tumor regrowth and the anaplastic transformation. We present here a model for the effect of radiotherapy on diffuse low-grade gliomas. We complement a migration-proliferation equation by an equation describing the appearance and draining of edema, and we argue that the latter effect accounts for the long decrease of the tumour's radius (sometimes even years) after the end of the radiotherapy. Using our four-parameter model, we are able to fit the data of the evolution of the tumor radius along time, of 28 patients [1]. The model predicts a strong correlation between a high proliferation coefficient and a low progression-free gain of lifetime among the patients, in agreement with clinical studies [1]. Moreover, by measuring or fixing the values of the parameters, we show that it is possible to predict, at the time of the radiotherapy, the duration of the tumour's radius decrease.
[1] Pallud J. et al. Dynamic imaging response following radiation therapy predicts long-term outcomes for diffuse low-grade gliomas Neuro Oncol. 2012;14:1-10. |
|