Abstract
Diffuse low-grade gliomas are slowly growing tumors that always recur after treatment. In this paper, we revisit the modeling of the evolution of the tumor radius before and after the radiotherapy process and propose a novel model that is simple yet biologically motivated and that remedies some shortcomings of previously proposed ones. We confront this with clinical data consisting of time series of tumor radii from 43 patient records by using a stochastic optimization technique and obtain very good fits in all cases. Since our model describes the evolution of a tumor from the very first glioma cell, it gives access to the possible age of the tumor. Using the technique of profile likelihood to extract all of the information from the data, we build confidence intervals for the tumor birth age and confirm the fact that low-grade gliomas seem to appear in the late teenage years. Moreover, an approximate analytical expression of the temporal evolution of the tumor radius allows us to explain the correlations observed in the data.
Highlights
Gliomas are tumors of the central nervous system that arise from precursors of glial cells and account for almost 80% of primary malignant brain tumors
The status of the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) enzyme mutation was not assessed, so we just followed the WHO classification that was in use at the time of diagnosis and used the term of diffuse low-grade gliomas (DLGGs) for these patients’ tumors, which included low-grade astocytomas and oligodendrogliomas [3]
We develop a simple biophysical model of DLGG evolution based on the diffusion–proliferation model with the addition of the effect of RT and confront it with clinical data from a large number (43) of patients
Summary
Gliomas are tumors of the central nervous system that arise from precursors of glial cells and account for almost 80% of primary malignant brain tumors. A revision of the World Health Organization classification was proposed, and it is the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) enzyme mutation status that allows one to classify these tumors in the first place [2]. The status of the IDH enzyme mutation was not assessed, so we just followed the WHO classification that was in use at the time of diagnosis and used the term of diffuse low-grade gliomas (DLGGs) for these patients’ tumors, which included low-grade astocytomas and oligodendrogliomas [3]
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