Plenary-06 : H. D. Landahl Mathematical Biophysics Award

Simon Martina Perez

Lecturer, Applied Mathematics

Oxford University, UK

Abstract:

Neuroblastoma, a paediatric extracranial solid cancer that arises from the developing sympathetic nervous system, is -- like many malignancies -- characterised by an abnormal distribution of cell types. In this talk, we propose a new minimal model of cell differentiation during sympathoadrenal development. By relating the model to clinical data from patient samples, we show that alterations in healthy differentiation dynamics are related to malignancy, and tumour volume growth. Our findings suggest that normal development dynamics make the embryonic sympathetic nervous system more robust to perturbations and accumulation of malignancies, and that the diversity of differentiation dynamics found in the neuroblastoma subtypes lead to unique risk profiles for neuroblastoma relapse after treatment.