Modeling of liver metastatic disease with applied drug therapy

Abstract

Colorectal carcinoma is acknowledged as the second leading cause of total cancer-related death in the European Region. The majority of deaths related to colorectal carcinoma are connected with liver metastatic disease. Approximately, in 25% of all patients, liver metastatic disease is diagnosed at the same time as the primary diagnosis, while up to a quarter of others would develop liver metastases in the course of the illness. In this study, we developed reaction-diffusion model and analyzed the effect of drug therapy on liver metastatic disease for a specific patient. Tumor volumes in specific time points were obtained using CT scan images. The nonlinear function for cell proliferation rate as well as data about clinically applied drug therapy was included in the model. Fitting procedure was used for parameter estimation. Good agreement of numerical and experimental results shows the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed system. © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.