Project: Biology Dynamics Modeller (BioDynaMo)
User: Dr Nicolò Cogno, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Biology Dynamics Modeller (BioDynaMo) can be used to study complex systems by simulating the behaviour of billions of cells. Dr Nicolò Cogno has used the technology to research cancer treatment.
BioDynaMo is an agent-based model, which allows a researcher to simulate independent entities that can interact among themselves, their environment, and which are coded with a behaviour which they use to respond to a situation. Increased computational power is making the technology more innovative for the field.
Radiotherapy uses radiation to try to damage and the DNA of cancerous cells. Despite many advancements in the field, this type of treatment can still produce unpleasant side effects such as radiation-induced fibrosis.
Dr Cogno used BioDynaMo to research how to reduce these side effects. He was able to use the technology to replicate a very small section of the lungs – an alveolar segment – to see what would happen when radiation interacted with the normal tissue. This recreated what happened to humans after treatment, rather than focusing on other animals, becoming the first, mechanistic model that replicated the behaviours of humans.
"The idea was to use BioDynaMo to replicate the damage to normal tissue, which was kind of new. Most of the models out there are used to simulate tumours, tumour growth and tumour response to treatments. In this case, we wanted to see what happens to the normal tissue, so BioDynaMo was extremely helpful."
This technique for modelling tissue was new as typically researchers use models estimated from years of experience based on years of treating the population. Dr Cogno was able to take one patient and to tune his model based on patient-specific features, meaning the radiotherapy could be more personalised.
"I was especially happy as this was something new – the use of mechanistic modelling for replacing the response of normal tissue to the radiation."
In Dr Cogno’s view the main advantages of BioDynaMo are:
- It is open source; it can be downloaded and installed in a matter of minutes.
- It is general purpose; it can be used to simulate all sorts of environments.
- It is fast and easy to use.
An innovative technology, BioDynaMo can be developed further to increase its important applications. With your support, we can expand the software’s capabilities for more ground-breaking research!