A grid-enabled toolkit for in silico oncology simulations

In silico (on the computer) oncology is a multi-disciplinary field that focuses on the examination and modeling of biological mechanisms related to the phenomenon of cancer. In silico oncology simulation model may be used for evaluating and comparing different therapeutic schemes while at the same time considering different values of critical parameters which present substantial inter-patient variability. As the number of the involved parameters and of the considered radiotherapeutic schemes increases, the resulting exponential increase in computational requirements makes the use of a grid environment for the execution of the simulations both a necessity for the involved researchers and an opportunity to make in silico oncology applications available to a wider biomedical and research community. In this paper, we describe a toolkit that enables the execution of in silico oncology simulations on grid infrastructures. This toolkit is designed and developed as a web portal with advanced features that facilitates the execution of in silico oncology simulations in grid environments. Several scenarios of radiotherapy simulations have been performed on the EGEE grid and indicative simulation results, as well as execution times are presented.