Computational Oncology of Chemotaxis-Driven Tumour--Immune Spatial Patterning and Stability
Abstract
Spatial tumour--immune heterogeneity is a key feature of solid-tumour progression, immune infiltration, and immune exclusion. We develop a computational oncology model in which tumour cells, immune effector cells, and a chemokine signal interact through a reaction--diffusion--chemotaxis system on a bounded tissue domain with no-flux boundaries. Chemokine is produced by tumour cells and tumour--immune contact, recruits immune cells, and guides chemotactic migration. After nondimensionalization, we establish positivity, a tumour-density bound, and immune/chemokine mass estimates. We identify the tumour-free equilibrium, derive the immune-control threshold , and reduce coexistence to a scalar equation. Linear stability analysis about coexistence yields a mode-wise dispersion relation in which chemotaxis appears as a wavenumber amplified coupling, producing finite-wavelength instability above a critical sensitivity. A conservative finite-volume scheme with upwind chemotactic flux verifies the thresholds, dominant unstable modes, sensitivity maps, positivity, convergence, and residual consistency.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.03813,
title = {Computational Oncology of Chemotaxis-Driven Tumour--Immune Spatial Patterning and Stability},
author = {Zonghao Liu and Jiguang Yu and Lei Su and Louis Shuo Wang and Yang Du and Jingfeng Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.03813},
year = {2026}
}