Glioblastomas are aggressive, highly heterogeneous brain tumours with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Their complex microenvironment, characterised by elevated interstitial fluid pressure and abnormal vasculature, presents major barriers to effective therapeutic delivery.

In the first part of this talk, we present a patient-specific multiscale computational framework that combines MRI-derived brain geometries, histopathology-informed microstructures, and asymptotic homogenisation to model interstitial fluid flow, pressure, and electric-field-modulated flow in glioblastoma. By solving homogenised Darcy and Laplace-type equations, the model predicts physiologically relevant pressure and flow distributions throughout the diseased brain. Numerical simulations suggest that externally applied electric fields can reverse outward interstitial flow, promoting inward transport and thus improving drug delivery. To our knowledge, this is the first framework to combine patient-specific anatomy and multiscale physics in the context of electric-field-driven therapy for glioblastoma.

We will also discuss related work that extends the interstitial flow to drug transport through a homogenised advection-diffusion-reaction model, providing insights into the distribution of therapeutics within glioblastoma. Finally, we present a work concerning mechanical explanation for reduced cerebrovascular reactivity in patients with brain metastases, linking edema-induced pressure changes to observations from functional MRI.

Contatto:
ivan.fumagalli@polimi.it