Skip to main content
Have a personal or library account? Click to login
Mathematical Oncology: Models, Methods, and Clinical Applications Cover

Mathematical Oncology: Models, Methods, and Clinical Applications

By:   
Open Access
|Sep 2026

References

  1. AGRAWAL, A.—KUMAR, R.—MAHESHWARI, S.—SHARMA, M.—BATRA, C. M.— SHARMA, S.—GAUR, V.: Mathematical and artificial intelligence techniques in modern drug discovery: A review, Drug Dev. Res. 87 (2026), e70212.
  2. ALBER, M.—TEPOLE, A. B.—CANNON, W. R.—DE, S.—DURA-BERNAL, S.— GARIKIPATI, K.—KARNIADAKIS, G.—LYTTON, W. W.—PERDIKARIS, P.— PETZOLD, L.—KUHL, E.: Integrating machine learning and multiscale modeling— perspectives, challenges, and opportunities in the biological, biomedical, and behavioral sciences, npj Digit. Med. 2 (2019), Art. 115.
  3. ALEXANDROV, L. B.—KIM, J.—HARADHVALA, N. J.—HUANG, M. N.— NG, A. W. T.—WU, Y.—BOOT, A.—COVINGTON, K. R.—GORDENIN, D. A.— BERGSTROM, E. N. et al.: The repertoire of mutational signatures in human cancer, Nature 578 (2020), 94–101.
  4. ANDERSON, A. R. A.: A hybrid mathematical model of solid tumour invasion: the importance of cell adhesion, Math. Med. Biol. 22 (2005), 163–186.
  5. ANDERSON, A. R. A.—CHAPLAIN, M. A. J.: Continuous and discrete mathematical models of tumor-induced angiogenesis, Bull. Math. Biol. 60 (1998), 857–899.
  6. AXELROD, R.—AXELROD, D. E.—PIENTA, K. J.: Evolution of cooperation among tumor cells, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103 (2006), 13474–13479.
  7. BARROS, L. R. C.—PAIXAO, E. A.—VALLI, A. M. P.—NAOZUKA, G. T.—FASSONI, A. C.—ALMEIDA, R. C.: CARTmath—A mathematical model of CAR-T immunotherapy in preclinical studies of hematological cancers, Cancers 13 (2021), Art. 2941.
  8. BASANTA, D.—HATZIKIROU, H.—DEUTSCH, A.: Studying the emergence of invasiveness in tumours using game theory, Eur. Phys. J. B 63 (2008), 393–397.
  9. BATTISTELLA, E.—VAKALOPOULOU, M.—SUN, R.—ESTIENNE, T.— LEROUSSEAU, M.—NIKOLAEV, S.—ALVAREZ ANDRES, E.—CARRE, A.— NIYOTEKA, S.—ROBERT, C.—PARAGIOS, N.—DEUTSCH, E.: COMBING: Clustering in oncology for mathematical and biological identification of novel gene signatures, IEEE/ACM Trans. Comput. Biol. Bioinform. 19 (2022), 3317–3331.
  10. BENZEKRY, S.—LAMONT, C.—BEHESHTI, A.—TRACZ, A.—EBOS, J. M. L.— HLATKY, L.—HAHNFELDT, P.: Classical mathematical models for description and prediction of experimental tumor growth, PLoS Comput. Biol. 10 (2014), e1003800.
  11. BOZIC, I.—ANTAL, T.—OHTSUKI, H.—CARTER, H.—KIM, D.—CHEN, S.— KARCHIN, R.—KINZLER, K. W.—VOGELSTEIN, B.—NOWAK, M. A.: Accumulation of driver and passenger mutations during tumor progression, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (2010), 18545–18550.
  12. BYRNE, H.—ALARCON, T.—OWEN, M. R.—WEBB, S. D.—MAINI, P. K.: Modelling aspects of cancer dynamics: A review, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 364 (2006), 1563–1578.
  13. CERAMI, E.—GAO, J.—DOGRUSOZ, U.—GROSS, B. E.—SUMER, S. O.—AKSOY, B. A.—JACOBSEN, A.—BYRNE, C. J.—HEUER, M. L.—LARSSON, E. et al.: The cBio Cancer Genomics Portal: An Open Platform for Exploring Multidimensional Cancer Genomics Data, Cancer Discov. 2 (2012), 401–404.
  14. CHEN, R. J.—DING, T.—LU,M. Y.—WILLIAMSON, D. F. K. et al.: Towards a generalpurpose foundation model for computational pathology, Nat. Med. 30 (2024), 850–862.
  15. CLARK, K.—VENDT, B.—SMITH, K.—FREYMANN, J.—KIRBY, J. et al.: The cancer imaging archive (TCIA): Maintaining and operating a public information repository, J. Digit. Imaging 26 (2013), 1045–1057.
  16. COLLINS, G. S.—MOONS, K. G. M.—DHIMAN, P.—RILEY, R. D.—BEAM, A. L.— VAN CALSTER, B. et al.: TRIPOD+AI statement: updated guidance for reporting clinical prediction models that use regression or machine learning methods, BMJ 385 (2024), e078378.
  17. CORTES, C.—VAPNIK, V.: Support-vector networks, Mach. Learn. 20 (1995), 273–297.
  18. DE PILLIS, L. G.—GU, W.—RADUNSKAYA, A. E.: Mixed immunotherapy and chemotherapy of tumors: modeling, applications and biological interpretations, J. Theor. Biol. 238 (2006), 841–862.
  19. DE PILLIS, L. G.—RADUNSKAYA, A. E.—WISEMAN, C. L.: A validated mathematical model of cell-mediated immune response to tumor growth, Cancer Res. 65 (2005), 7950–7958.
  20. DEISBOECK, T. S.—WANG, Z.—MACKLIN, P.—CRISTINI, V.: Multiscale Cancer Modeling, Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 13 (2011), 127–155.
  21. DENG, Z.—TANG, C.—HUANG, Z.—LIN, J.—CHEN, Y.—NING, J.—MA, C.— LIU, J.—LI, W.—ZHU, Y. et al.: Project Imaging-X: A Survey of 1000+ Open-Access Medical Imaging Datasets for Foundation Model Development, 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27460.
  22. DOSOVITSKIY, A.—BEYER, L.—KOLESNIKOV, A.—WEISSENBORN, D.—ZHAI, X.—UNTERTHINER, T.—DEHGHANI, M.—MINDERER, M.—HEIGOLD, G.— GELLY, S.—USZKOREIT, J.—HOULSBY, N.: An image is worth 16×16 words: Transformers for image recognition at scale. In: International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.11929.
  23. DRUMMOND, D.—COULET, A.: Technical, ethical, legal, and societal challenges with digital twin systems for the management of chronic diseases in children and young people, J. Med. Internet Res. 24 (2022), e39698.
  24. ERGUN, A.—CAMPHAUSEN, K.—WEIN, L. M.: Optimal scheduling of radiotherapy and angiogenic inhibitors, Bull. Math. Biol. 65 (2003), 407–424.
  25. ESTEVA, A.—KUPREL, B.—NOVOA, R. A.—KO, J.—SWETTER, S. M.—BLAU, H. M.—THRUN, S.: Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks, Nature 542 (2017), 115–118.
  26. FARES, J.—FARES, M. Y.—KHACHFE, H. H.—SALHAB, H. A.—FARES, Y.: Molecular principles of metastasis: a hallmark of cancer revisited, Signal Transduct. Target. Ther. 5 (2020), Art. 28.
  27. FOWLER, J. F.: The linear-quadratic formula and progress in fractionated radiotherapy, Br. J. Radiol. 62 (1989), 679–694.
  28. GATENBY, R. A.—SILVA, A. S.—GILLIES, R. J.—FRIEDEN, B. R.: Adaptive therapy, Cancer Res. 69 (2009), 4894–4903.
  29. GERLEE, P.—JOHANSSON, M.: Inferring rates of metastatic dissemination using stochastic network models, PLoS Comput. Biol. 15 (2019), e1006868.
  30. GERLINGER, M.—ROWAN, A. J.—HORSWELL, S.—LARKIN, J.—ENDESFELDER, D.—GRONROOS, E.—MARTINEZ, P.—MATTHEWS, N.—STEWART, A.—TARPEY, P. et al.: Intratumor heterogeneity and branched evolution revealed by multiregion sequencing, N. Engl. J. Med. 366 (2012), 883–892.
  31. GHAJAR, C. M.—PEINADO, H.—MORI, H.—MATEI, I. R.—EVASON, K. J.— BRAZIER, H.—ALMEIDA, D.—KOLLER, A.—HAJJAR, K. A.—STAINIER, D. Y. R.— CHEN, E. I.—LYDEN, D.—BISSELL, M. J.: The perivascular niche regulates breast tumour dormancy, Nat. Cell Biol. 15 (2013), 807–817.
  32. GIANSANTI, D.—MORELLI, S.: Exploring the Potential of digital twins in cancer treatment: A narrative review of reviews, J. Clin. Med. 14 (2025), Art. 3574.
  33. GILLESPIE, D. T.: Exact stochastic simulation of coupled chemical reactions, J. Phys. Chem. 81 (1977), 2340–2361.
  34. GOGOSHIN, G.—RODIN, A. S.: Graph neural networks in cancer and oncology research: Emerging and future trends, Cancers 15 (2023), Art. 5858.
  35. HAHNFELDT, P.—PANIGRAHY, D.—FOLKMAN, J.—HLATKY, L.: Tumor development under angiogenic signaling: A dynamical theory of tumor growth, treatment response, and postvascular dormancy, Cancer Res. 59 (1999), 4770–4775.
  36. HAMZA, B.—MILLER, A. B.—MEIER, L.—STOCKSLAGER, M.—NG, S. R. et al.: Measuring kinetics and metastatic propensity of CTCs by blood exchange between mice, Nat. Commun. 12 (2021), Art. 5680.
  37. HANAHAN, D.: Hallmarks of cancer: New dimensions, Cancer Discov. 12 (2022), 31–46.
  38. HAO, Y.—QIU, Z.—HOLMES, J.—LOCKENHOFF, C. E.—LIU, W.—GHASSEMI, M.—KALANTARI, S.: Large language model integrations in cancer decision-making: a systematic review and meta-analysis, npj Digit. Med. 8 (2025), Art. 450.
  39. HSIEH, W.-C.—BUDIARTO, B. R.—WANG, Y.-F.—LIN, C.-Y.—GWO, M.-C.—SO, D. K.—TZENG, Y.-S.—CHEN, S.-Y.: Spatial multi-omics analyses of the tumor immune microenvironment, J. Biomed. Sci. 29 (2022), Art. 96.
  40. ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium: Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes, Nature 578 (2020), 82–93.
  41. IWASA, Y.—NOWAK, M. A.—MICHOR, F.: Evolution of resistance during clonal expansion, Genetics 172 (2006), 2557–2566.
  42. IWATA, K.—KAWASAKI, K.—SHIGESADA, N.: A dynamical model for the growth and size distribution of multiple metastatic tumors, J. Theor. Biol.203 (2000), 177–186.
  43. KEMKAR, S.—TAO, M.—GHOSH, A.—STAMATAKOS, G.—GRAF, N.—POOREY, K.—BALAKRISHNAN, U.—TRASK, N.—RADHAKRISHNAN, R.: Towards verifiable cancer digital twins: tissue level modeling protocol for precision medicine, Front. Physiol. 15 (2024), Art. 1473125.
  44. KOSTELICH, E. J.—KUANG, Y.—MCDANIEL, J. M.—MOORE, N. Z.— MARTIROSYAN, N. L.—PREUL, M. C.: Accurate state estimation from uncertain data and models: an application of data assimilation to mathematical models of human brain tumors, Biol. Direct 6 (2011), Art. 64.
  45. KUZNETSOV, V. A.—MAKALKIN, I. A.—TAYLOR, M. A.—PERELSON, A. S.: Nonlinear dynamics of immunogenic tumors: Parameter estimation and global bifurcation analysis, Bull. Math. Biol. 56 (1994), 295–321.
  46. LEDZEWICZ, U.—MAURER, H.—SCHATTLER, H.: Optimal and suboptimal protocols for a mathematical model for tumor anti-angiogenesis in combination with chemotherapy, Math. Biosci. Eng. 8 (2011), 307–323.
  47. LEDZEWICZ, U.—SCHATTLER, H.: A review of optimal chemotherapy protocols: From MTD towards metronomic therapy, Math. Model. Nat. Phenom. 9 (2014), 131–152.
  48. LENHART, S.—WORKMAN, J. T.: Optimal Control Applied to Biological Models. Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2007.
  49. LIMA, E. A. B. F.—FAGHIHI, D.—PHILLEY, R.—YANG, J.—VIROSTKO, J.— PHILLIPS, C. M.—YANKEELOV, T. E.: Bayesian calibration of a stochastic, multiscale agent-based model for predicting in vitro tumor growth, PLoS Comput. Biol. 17 (2021), e1008845.
  50. LUNDBERG, S. M.—LEE, S.-I.: A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2017, pp. 4765–4774.
  51. Mathematical Oncology Community Resource: Mathematical Oncology, https://mathematical-oncology.org/, Accessed 8 April 2026.
  52. MAYNARD SMITH, J.—PRICE, G. R.: The logic of animal conflict, Nature 246 (1973), 15–18.
  53. METZCAR, J.—JUTZELER, C. R.—MACKLIN, P.—KOHN-LUQUE, A.— BRUNINGK, S. C.: A review of mechanistic learning in mathematical oncology, Front. Immunol. 15 (2024), Art. 1363144.
  54. MOINGEON, P.—CHENEL, M.—ROUSSEAU, C.—VOISIN, E.—GUEDJ, M.: Virtual patients, digital twins and causal disease models: Paving the ground for in silico clinical trials, Drug Discov. Today 28 (2023), Art. 103605.
  55. MOREIRA, J.—DEUTSCH, A.: Cellular automaton models of tumor development: A critical review, Adv. Complex Syst. 5 (2002), 247–268.
  56. NORTON, K.-A.—GONG, C.—JAMALIAN, S.—POPEL, A. S.: Multiscale agent-based and hybrid modeling of the tumor immune microenvironment, Processes 7 (2019), Art. 37.
  57. NOWELL, P. C.: The clonal evolution of tumor cell populations, Science 194 (1976), 23–28.
  58. OSIPOV, A.—NIKOLIC, O.—GERTYCH, A.—PARKER, S.—HENDIFAR, A.—SINGH, P.—FILIPPOVA, D.—DAGLIYAN, G.—FERRONE, C. R.—ZHENG, L.—MOORE, J. H.—TOURTELLOTTE, W.—VAN EYK, J. E.—THEODORESCU, D.: The Molecular Twin artificial-intelligence platform integrates multi-omic data to predict outcomes for pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients, Nat. Cancer 5 (2024), 299–314.
  59. PANDIT, S.—XU, A.—NGUYEN, X.-P.—MING, Y.—XIONG, C.—JOTY, S.: Hard2Verify: A step-level verification benchmark for open-ended frontier math, https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13744.
  60. PARK, J. J. H.—HSU, G.—SIDEN, E. G.—THORLUND, K.—MILLS, E. J.: An overview of precision oncology basket and umbrella trials for clinicians, CA Cancer J. Clin. 70 (2020), 125–137.
  61. PRADELLI, F.—STROBL, M.—MARZBAN, S.—DE KERMENGUY, F.—BARNETT, A.—GANESAN, K.—LORENZO, G.—HORMUTH, D. A.—HAMIS, S.—BHASKAR, D.—ANDERSON, A. R. A.—WEST, J.: 75 Years of Mathematical Oncology, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.13.699306v1.
  62. PUGH, K.—GYLLINGBERG, L.—STRATIEV, S.—HAMIS, S.: A bibliometric study on mathematical oncology: Interdisciplinarity, internationality, collaboration and trending topics, Bull. Math. Biol. 87 (2025), Art. 174.
  63. RIEKE, N.—HANCOX, J.—LI, W.—MILLETARI, F.—ROTH, H. R.—ALBARQOUNI, S. et al.: The future of digital health with federated learning, npj Digit. Med. 3 (2020), Art. 119.
  64. ROCKNE, R. C.—HAWKINS-DAARUD, A.—SWANSON, K. R.—SLUKA, J. P.— GLAZIER, J. A.—MACKLIN, P.—HORMUTH, D. A. et al.: The 2019 mathematical oncology roadmap, Phys. Biol. 16 (2019), Art. 041005.
  65. ROOSE, T.—NETTI, P. A.—MUNN, L. L.—BOUCHER, Y.—JAIN, R. K.: Solid stress generated by spheroid growth estimated using a linear poroelasticity model, Microvasc. Res. 66 (2003), 204–212.
  66. SCHWARTZ, R.—SCHAFFER, A. A.: The evolution of tumour phylogenetics: principles and practice, Nat. Rev. Genet. 18 (2017), 213–229.
  67. SCHATTLER, H.—LEDZEWICZ, U.: Geometric Optimal Control: Theory, Methods and Examples. Interdiscip. Appl. Math. vol. 38, Springer, 2012.
  68. SCHATTLER, H.—LEDZEWICZ, U.: Optimal Control for Mathematical Models of Cancer Therapies: An Application of Geometric Methods. Interdiscip. Appl. Math., vol. 42, Springer, 2015.
  69. SCIMAGO. SJR—SCImago Journal & Country Rank. https://www.scimagojr.com/, 2026. Accessed 22 April 2026.
  70. SKIPPER, H. E.—SCHABEL, F. M.—WILCOX, W. S.: Experimental evaluation of potential anticancer agents. XIII. On the criteria and kinetics associated with “Curability” of experimental leukemia, Cancer Chemotherapy Reports 35 (1964), 1–111.
  71. STROBL, M. A. R.—WEST, J.—VIOSSAT, Y.—DAMAGHI, M.—ROBERTSONTESSI, M.—BROWN, J. S.—GATENBY, R. A.—MAINI, P. K.—ANDERSON, A. R. A.: Turnover modulates the need for a cost of resistance in adaptive therapy, Cancer Res. 81 (2021), 1135–1147.
  72. SUBRAMANIAN, A.—TAMAYO, P.—MOOTHA, V. K.—MUKHERJEE, S.—EBERT, B. L.—GILLETTE, M. A.—PAULOVICH, A.—POMEROY, S. L.—GOLUB, T. R.— LANDER, E. S.—MESIROV, J. P.: Gene set enrichment analysis: A knowledge-based approach for interpreting genome-wide expression profiles, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102 (2005), 15545–15550.
  73. SWANSON, K. R.—ALVORD, E. C.—MURRAY, J. D.: A quantitative model for differential motility of gliomas in grey and white matter, Cell Proliferation 33 (2000), 317–329.
  74. ŚWIERNIAK, A.—LEDZEWICZ, U.—SCHATTLER, H.: Optimal control for a class of compartmental models in cancer chemotherapy, Int. J. Appl. Math. Comput. Sci. 13 (2003), 357–368.
  75. TIROSH, I.—IZAR, B.—PRAKADAN, S. M.—WADSWORTH, M. H.—TREACY, D.— TROMBETTA, J. J.—ROTEM, A.—RODMAN, C.—LIAN, C.—MURPHY, G. et al.: Dissecting the multicellular ecosystem of metastatic melanoma by single-cell RNA-seq, Science 352 (2016), 189–196.
  76. TOMLINSON, I. P.—BODMER, W. F.: Modelling the consequences of interactions between tumour cells, Br. J. Cancer 75 (1997), 157–160.
  77. U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada and Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency: Good Machine Learning Practice for Medical Device Development: Guiding Principles, Technical report, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2021.
  78. VICKERS, A. J.—ELKIN, E. B.: Decision Curve Analysis: A Novel Method for Evaluating Prediction Models, Medical Decision Making 26 (2006), 565–574.
  79. WANG, Z.—GERSTEIN, M.—SNYDER, M.: RNA-Seq: a revolutionary tool for transcriptomics, Nature Reviews Genetics 10 (2009), 57–63.
  80. WEST, G. B.—BROWN, J. H.—ENQUIST, B. J.: A general model for ontogenetic growth, Nature 413 (2001), 628–631.
  81. WEST, J.—YOU, L.—ZHANG, J.—GATENBY, R. A.—BROWN, J. S.—NEWTON, P. K.—ANDERSON, A. R. A.: Towards multidrug adaptive therapy, Cancer Res. 80 (2020), 1578–1589.
  82. WILKINSON, M. D.—DUMONTIER, M.—AALBERSBERG, I. J.—APPLETON, G.— AXTON, M.—BAAK, A.—BLOMBERG, N. et al.: The FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship, Scientific Data 3 (2016), Art. 160018.
  83. YANKEELOV, T. E.—ATUEGWU, N. C.—DEANE, N. G.—GORE, J. C.: Modeling tumor growth and treatment response based on quantitative imaging data, Integrative Biology 2 (2010), 338–345.
  84. ZHANG, J.—CUNNINGHAM, J. J.—BROWN, J. S.—GATENBY, R. A.: Integrating evolutionary dynamics into treatment of metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer, Nat. Commun. 8 (2017), Art. 1816.
  85. ZHU, W.—CHEN, A.—SONG, Y.—CHEN, K.—ZHU, C.—CHEN, Z.—ZHAO, T.: From perception to reasoning: Deep thinking empowers multimodal large language models, https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12861.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/tmmp-2026-0011 | Journal eISSN: 1338-9750 (formerly 1210-3195) | Journal ISSN: 1210-3195
Language: English
Page range: 1 - 56
Submitted on: May 30, 2026
Accepted on: Jun 30, 2026
Published on: Sep 9, 2026
Published by: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Mathematical Institute
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2026 Peter Zigman, published by Slovak Academy of Sciences, Mathematical Institute
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.