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Updated: May 7, 2026
Paramyxoviruses for Tumor-targeted Immunomodulation: Design and Evaluation Ex Vivo
Published on: January 7, 2019
Mathematical model for radial expansion and conflation of intratumoral infectious centers predicts curative oncolytic
Kent Bailey1, Amber Kirk, Shruthi Naik
1Department of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America.
Abstract:
Simple, inductive mathematical models of oncolytic virotherapy are needed to guide protocol design and improve treatment outcomes. Analysis of plasmacytomas regressing after a single intravenous dose of oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus in myeloma animal models revealed that intratumoral virus spread was spatially constrained, occurring almost exclusively through radial expansion of randomly distributed infectious centers. From these experimental observations we developed a simple model to calculate the probability of survival for any cell within a treated tumor. The model predicted that small changes to the density of initially infected cells or to the average maximum radius of infected centers would have a major impact on treatment outcome, and this was confirmed experimentally. The new model provides a useful and flexible tool for virotherapy protocol optimization.
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