Date: July 5, 2022
Speaker: Dr. Kasia Rejniak
Affiliation: Moffitt Cancer Center
Title: Micro-pharmacology: Modeling the Tissue Barriers in Cancer Therapies
Abstract: The efficacy of anti-cancer treatments, systemic chemotherapy, targeted therapies, or immunotherapy, are usually determined from blood measurements or indirectly via tumor burden monitoring. However, the effectiveness of these treatments on the tumor site can be hampered by the physical attributes of the tumor tissue, such as irregular vasculature, specific cellular and ECM architecture, metabolic gradients, or non-uniform expression of the cell membrane receptors. This can prevent therapeutic agents to reach tumor cells in quantities sufficient to exert the desired effect. To examine ways to improve treatment delivery on a cell-to-tissue scale (single-cell pharmacology), we developed the micropharmacology computational framework that helps to design optimal schedules of drug combinations, or most effective properties of targeted or immunotherapies.