The Role of Viral Dynamics and Infectivity in Models of Oncolytic Virotherapy for Tumours with Different Motility

TL;DR

This paper explores how viral infectivity and dynamics affect the success of oncolytic virotherapy in treating tumors with different motility.

Contribution

The study compares different mathematical models to highlight the importance of viral infectivity over tumor motility in virotherapy outcomes.

Findings

Viral infectivity can be more critical than tumor motility for successful virotherapy outcomes.

Mathematical models reveal how viral infection waves propagate in tumors.

Oscillatory behaviors and stochasticity influence tumor eradication or escape during treatment.

Abstract

The use of ad-hoc engineered viruses in the fight against tumours is one of the greatest ideas in cancer therapeutics within the last three decades. Although some remarkable successes have been obtained, it is still not entirely clear how to achieve reliable protocols that can be routinely employed with confidence on a significant range of tumours. In this work, we concentrate on the study of different mathematical descriptions of virotherapy with the aim of better understanding the role of viral infectivity and viral dynamics in positive therapeutic outcomes. In particular, we compare probabilistic, individual approaches with continuous, spatially inhomogeneous models and investigate the importance of different tumour motility and different mathematical representations of viral infectivity. Some of these formulations also allow us to arrive at better analytical characterisation of how waves of viral infections arise and propagate in tumours, providing interesting insights into therapy dynamics. Similarly to previous studies, oscillatory behaviours, stochasticity and cancers’ diffusivities are all central to the eradication or the escape of tumours under virotherapy. Here, though, our results also show that the ability of viruses to infect tumours seems, in certain cases, more important to a final positive outcome than tumours’ motility or even reproductivity. This could hopefully represent a first step into better insights into viral dynamics that may help clinicians to achieve consistently better outcomes.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11538-026-01630-6.

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