Derivation of Continuum Models from An Agent-based Cancer Model: Optimization and Sensitivity Analysis

Background: Agent-based models provide a formidable tool for exploring complex and emergent behaviour of biological systems as well as accurate results but with the drawback of needing a lot of computational power and time for subsequent analysis. On the other hand, equation-based models can more easily be used for complex analysis in a much shorter timescale.

Methods & objective: This paper formulates an ordinary differential equations and stochastic differential equations model to capture the behaviour of an existing agent-based model of tumour cell reprogramming and applies it to optimization of possible treatment as well as dosage sensitivity analysis.

Results: For certain values of the parameter space a close match between the equation-based and agent-based models is achieved. The need for division of labour between the two approaches is explored.