Scaling laws and fractals in cancer

Life is the most complex and diverse physical system in the known universe. It is remarkable that underlying that complexity it is possible to find simple scaling laws in many biological processes over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Many processes in biology obey scaling laws: metabolic rates, lengths of genomes, tree heights, concentrations of RNA, masses of cerebral gray matter, density of mitochondria and life spans, etc. We study scaling laws in cancer to find regularities behind the observed phenomena (metabolism, growth rates, etc.) and define metrics of cancer aggressiveness that have utility as prognostic and response biomarkers.

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Mathematical modelling is being developed by MOLAB researchers in collaboration with Philip Maini (Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford). Biological and clinical aspects cover a plethora of tumors for which real-patient data is available, thanks to our collaborators in hospitals such as Hospital General Universitario de Ciudad Real, Hospital 12 de Octubre and Hospital de Valencia.