Agent-based modelling of metastatic prostate cancer – from fragmented insights to integrative frameworks

Results : From 1,247 screened records, 135 studies met inclusion criteria. Analysis revealed two parallel streams of excellence: (1) prostate-specific ABMs incorporating stromal interactions (cancer-associated fibroblasts, macrophages) and androgen signalling, demonstrating spatial tumour constraints and immunomodulatory effects of androgen deprivation therapy but universally lacking adaptive immunity; and (2) sophisticated immuno-oncology ABMs in other cancers capturing PD-1/PD-L1 dynamics, IFN-γ-mediated adaptive resistance, metabolic competition, and CAR-T cell trafficking, yet not tailored to prostate-specific biology. The seminal hybrid model of bone metastasis by Araujo and colleagues successfully recapitulated the RANKL-TGF-β vicious cycle but omitted immune components. No existing framework integrates primary invasion, immune evasion, and the full metastatic cascade within a single spatially explicit platform.