Preface

This special issue is devoted to cancer modelling, with emphasis on multiscale methods to describe the complex biological phenomena related to the onset of tumour cells due to genetic mutations and their proliferation, uncontested by the immune system or by specific therapeutic intervention. It is an important and challenging research field which attracts an increasing number of applied mathematicians involved in a research field which Gatenby and Maini [12] aptly designated “Mathematical Oncology”. The interest of applied mathematians in the above research field is prompted by both social as well as mathematical considerations. In the first place, cancer is one of the most destructive diseases in the industrialised nations, being surpassed only by cardiovascular diseases. Indeed, the World Health Organisation estimates that, at present, cancer kills approximately six million people annually. For this reason, the fight against cancer is of major importance to public health (and also economic resources) throughout the world. In addition, one of the great scientific revolutions of this century is undoubtedly going to be the mathematical formalisation of phenomena occurring in the life sciences and medicine, much as the mathematics has revolutionised the physical sciences over the past two centuries. These motivations are reason enough to explain why applied mathematicians are becoming increasingly involved in the field of mathematical oncology and contributing to the understanding of the complexities of cancer. It is not an easy task and many fundamental conceptual issues need to be resolved. Indeed Bellomo and Maini [4,5] raise the following important questions: