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Cancer is increasingly perceived as a systems-level, network phenomenon. The major trend of malignant transformation can be described as a two-phase process, where an initial increase of network plasticity is followed by a decrease of…
In a previous paper we have introduced a phenomenological model of cell metabolism and of the cell cycle to simulate the behavior of large tumor cell populations (Chignola R and Milotti E, Phys. Biol. 2 (2005) 8-22). Here we describe a…
Unstable dynamics characterizes the evolution of most solid tumors. Because of an increased failure of maintaining genome integrity, a cumulative increase in the levels of gene mutation and loss is observed. Previous work suggests that…
The transition from a normal to cancerous cell requires a number of highly specific mutations that affect cell cycle regulation, apoptosis, differentiation, and many other cell functions. One hallmark of cancerous genomes is genomic…
Cancer is a complex disease and thus is complicated to model. However, simple models that describe the main processes involved in tumoral dynamics, e.g., competition and mutation, can give us clues about cancer behaviour, at least…
Metastasis, the spread of cancer cells from a primary tumor to secondary location(s) in the human organism, is the ultimate cause of death for the majority of cancer patients. That is why, it is crucial to understand metastases evolution in…
Tumors are defined by their intense proliferation, but sometimes cancer cells turn senescent and stop replicating. In the stochastic cancer model in which all cells are tumorigenic, senescence is seen as the result of random mutations,…
Since the discovery of a cancer initiating side population in solid tumours, studies focussing on the role of so-called cancer stem cells in cancer initiation and progression have abounded. The biological interrogation of these cells has…
We aim to understand the evolution of the genetic composition of cancer cell populations. To achieve this, we consider an individual-based model representing a cell population where cells divide, die and mutate along the edges of a finite…
Stem cells are characterized by their ability to self-renew, as well as to differentiate and give rise to new populations of cells. Stem cell divisions are crucial for generative processes that occur during early development, and later in…
Cellular responses to death-promoting stimuli typically proceed through a differentiated multistage process, involving a lag phase, extensive death, and potential adaptation. Deregulation of this chain of events is at the root of many…
Cancer cells are widely known to be protected from apoptosis, which is a major hurdle to successful anti-cancer therapy. Over-expression of several anti-apoptotic proteins, or mutations in pro-apoptotic factors, has been recognized to…
Cancer stem cells have been shown to be critical to the development of a variety of solid cancers. The precise interplay mechanisms between cancer stem cells and the rest of a tissue are still not elucidated. To shed light on the…
In this review, we discuss recent advances on the plasticity of cancer stem cells and highlight their relevance to understand the metastatic process and to guide therapeutic interventions. Recent results suggest that the strict hierarchical…
In this work, we investigate the population dynamics of tumor cells under therapeutic pressure. Although drug treatment initially induces a reduction in tumor burden, treatment failure frequently occurs over time due to the emergence of…
We propose a simple dynamic model of cancer development that captures carcinogenesis and subsequent cancer progression. A central idea of the model is to include the immune system as an extinction threshold, similar to the strong Allee…
Stem cells have the potential to produce lineages of non-stem cell populations (differentiated cells) via a ubiquitous hierarchal division scheme. Differentiation of a stem cell into (partially) differentiated cells can happen either…
Cancer is a disease of cellular regulation, often initiated by genetic mutation within cells, and leading to a heterogeneous cell population within tissues. In the competition for nutrients and growth space within the tumors the phenotype…
A simple analytical framework to study the molecular quasispecies evolution of finite populations is proposed, in which the population is assumed to be a random combination of the constiyuent molecules in each generation,i.e., linkage…
Background: A fundamental problem in cancer research is identifying the cell type that is capable of sustaining neoplastic growth and its origin from normal tissue cells. Recent investigations of a variety of tumor types have shown that…