Dr. Erica Rutter

Erica Rutter

Date: November 8, 2022

Speaker: Dr. Erica Rutter

Affiliation: University of California, Merced

Title: Modeling and Estimating Intratumoral Heterogeneity in Cancer

Abstract: Heterogeneity in biological populations, from cancer to ecological systems, is ubiquitous. Despite this knowledge, current mathematical models in population biology often do not account for inter- or intra-individual heterogeneity. In systems such as cancer, this means assuming cellular homogeneity and deterministic phenotypes, despite the fact that heterogeneity is thought to play a crucial role in therapy resistance. Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is an aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer that is notoriously difficult to predict and treat due to its heterogeneous nature. In this talk, I will discuss several approaches I have developed towards incorporating and estimating cellular heterogeneity in partial differential equation (PDE) models of GBM growth. In particular, I will use random differential equations for modeling heterogeneity and the Prohorov metric framework for estimating parameter distributions from aggregate data.