Facultat de Física

Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada

Tumors as complex ecosystems: Diversity, immunotherapy and the microbiome

Dr. Guim Aguadé-Gorgorió

Institut des sciences de l'´volution de Montpellier -- University Montpellier, CNRS

Many cancers resist therapeutic intervention. This is fundamentally related to intratumor heterogeneity: like species in an ecosystem, multiple cancer populations with different phenotypic signatures coexist inside a tumor. In this brief talk I will review recent results from theoretical ecology that could help us better understand the complexity of heterogeneous tumors. I will also discuss the interaction between cancer and two other complex systems, the immune system and the gut microbiome, with implications across a wide range of diseases. The goal is to propose open questions and a potential roadmap for further research in the ecological complexity of cancer, the immune system and the microbiome.

Short bio: Guim Aguadé-Gorgorió is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier. He studied physics at the Universitat de Barcelona and holds a PhD in Biomedicine and Complex Systems, during which he worked in using mathematical models to understand the ecology and evolution of cancer and immunotherapy. His research focuses on using mathematical models to understand complex biological systems, where many interacting components -- from cells to species -- can lead to emergent system properties.