ZIH-Colloquium 2024
Table of contents
The ZIH colloquium is a public event and takes place usually the 4th Thursday of each month. Below you will find the current and former dates with all necessary information. You are cordially invited!
30 April 2024, 3:00 p.m., APB-1096/ Online BBB:
Dr. Artur César Fassoni (Universidade Federal de Itajubá/ UNIFEI, Brazil) - „Mathematical insights for immuno-oncology: side effects in CAR-T cell therapy, and plasticity-mediated tumor survival“
In this talk, I'll discuss ongoing research on two topics in mathematical oncology. In the first part, I'll present an ordinary differential equation model for cytokine release syndrome (CRS) in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. While CAR T-cell therapy is promising, CRS is a common clinical challenge. We developed a model for CRS that was calibrated with data from 25 patients with different responses. Using time-scale arguments, we relate the shape of the response curves to interpretable model parameters. Considering three known mechanisms of macrophage activation, we identify the CD40-CD40L axis as the primary driver of CRS, providing a clinically viable target to overcome CRS. In the second part, I'll present a partial differential equation model of tumor progression and survival mediated by phenotypic plasticity. Motivated by the role of population heterogeneity in cancer progression and treatment, we develop an integro-differential model that describes tumor heterogeneity within an aspect space of cell phenotypes. By introducing diffusion in the aspect space, we define a tumor plasticity parameter as the diffusion coefficient. Numerical simulations illustrate different scenarios with tumor survival and extinction dynamics.
Artur C. Fassoni studied Mathematics at the Federal University of Viçosa, in Brazil, and received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the State University of Campinas in 2016 for his work on mathematical oncology. Since 2013, he has been a professor of mathematics at the Federal University of Itajubá in Brazil. In 2017, he was a visiting scientist at the Institute of Medical Informatics and Biometry (IMB) at TU Dresden. His research deals with mathematical models in the field of immuno-oncology, focusing on leukemias and CAR T-cell therapy, approaching both applied and theoretical aspects. He received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship for experienced researchers for a second stay at the IMB/TUDresden, working with Prof. Dr. Ingmar Glauche.
14 March 2024, 3:00 p.m., WIL-A317/ Online BBB:
Prof. Athanasius F. M. (Stan) Marée (School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, UK) - „A multi-level biophysical approach to cell motility to unravel gastrulation and somitogenesis“
Prof. Athanasius F. M. (Stan) Marée
The first segmented structures to appear in developing vertebrate embryos are the somites, defining the principal axis and segmentation of the animal's body plan. Somitogenesis follows a clock-like rhythm, and a range of molecular "gears" of this "clock" have been identified with expressions oscillating at that same frequency. In my talk I will argue that to unravel the mechanisms underlying this intricate morphogenetic process it is key to link our understanding of the gene regulatory processes and cell-cell signalling to the biophysics of deformation, adhesion, motility and directed migration of the cells involved. After convincing ourselves that the Cellular Potts Model is indeed a powerful framework to correctly capture such biophysical processes, I will focus on chick somitogenesis and, using the Cellular Potts Model as an integrative unit, show that the known biomolecular network and modifications in chemotaxis and adhesion can not only explain the formation of the principle axis during gastrulation, but also the segmentation into somites as a consequence of a self-organised transition from a temporal to a spatial pattern. Through this study we identify which aspects of the mechanism are robust and which are more sensitive for the specific molecular and biophysical circumstances. We will discuss how this can be related to evolutionary conserved mechanisms, and predict at which steps of the developmental process divergent solutions between species should be expected.
Stan Marée had studied biology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and received his PhD in Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics in 2000 from Utrecht University for his work on mophogenesis of Dictyostelium discoideum. After a PostDoc in Mathematical Biology at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and as a staff member in the Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics Group at Utrecht University, he founded his research group in 2010 at the Department of Computational and Systems Biology, John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. Since 2019, Stan Marée holds the Chair in Systems and Predictive Biology at the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, UK. He has developed, together with Paulien Hogeweg, Leah Edelstein-Keshet and Veronica Grieneisen, some of the most insightful and comprehensive computational models of self-organised patterning, of tissue morphogenesis, of cell polarity and cell motility from social microorganisms to animals to plant tissues.
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