Related papers: Phenotypic heterogeneity in modeling cancer evolut…
Many mathematical models of evolution assume that all individuals experience the same environment. Here, we study the Moran process in heterogeneous environments. The population is of finite size with two competing types, which are exposed…
There is a widening recognition that cancer cells are products of complex developmental processes. Carcinogenesis and metastasis formation are increasingly described as systems-level, network phenomena. Here we propose that malignant…
Heterogeneity within tumour cell populations is associated with an increase in malignancy and appears to play an important role during cancer metastasis. Using in silico experiments, we study the interplay between collective behaviours and…
Tumor growth, which plays a central role in cancer evolution, depends on both the internal features of the cells, such as their ability for unlimited duplication, and the external conditions, e.g., supply of nutrients, as well as the…
In this review we summarize our recent efforts in trying to understand the role of heterogeneity in cancer progression by using neural networks to characterise different aspects of the mapping from a cancer cells genotype and environment to…
Understanding how microenvironmental heterogeneity influences tumor progression is essential for advancing both cancer biology and therapeutic strategies. In this study, we develop a cellular automata (CA) model to simulate tumor growth…
Theoretical reasoning suggests that human cancer may result from knocking down the genetic constraints evolved for maintenance of the metazoan multicellularity, which, however, requires a critical test. Using xenograft-based experimental…
Most cancers in humans are large, measuring centimeters in diameter, composed of many billions of cells. An equivalent mass of normal cells would be highly heterogeneous as a result of the mutations that occur during each cell division.…
In this thesis we develop minimal models of the relationship between motility, growth, and evolution of cancer cells. We utilise simple simulations of a population of individual cells in space to examine how changes in mechanical properties…
Development of resistance limits transferability of most anticancer therapies into curative treatment and understanding mechanisms beyond it remains a big challenge. Many high resolution experimental observations show enormous intratumor…
The emergence of acquired drug resistance in cancer represents a major barrier to treatment success. While research has traditionally focused on genetic sources of resistance, recent findings suggest that cancer cells can acquire transient…
Understanding if and how mutants reach fixation in populations is an important question in evolutionary biology. We study the impact of population growth has on the success of mutants. To systematically understand the effects of growth we…
We consider a spatial (line) model for invasion of a population by a single mutant with a stochastically selectively neutral fitness landscape, independent from the fitness landscape for non-mutants. This model is similar to those…
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…
The phenotypic plasticity of cancer cells has received special attention in recent years. Even though related models have been widely studied in terms of mathematical properties, a thorough statistical analysis on parameter estimation and…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
The expansion of a population into new habitat is a transient process that leaves its footprints in the genetic composition of the expanding population. How the structure of the environment shapes the population front and the evolutionary…
We study a simple model of DNA evolution in a growing population of cells. Each cell contains a nucleotide sequence which randomly mutates at cell division. Cells divide according to a branching process. Following typical parameter values…
Major efforts to sequence cancer genomes are now occurring throughout the world. Though the emerging data from these studies are illuminating, their reconciliation with epidemiologic and clinical observations poses a major challenge. In the…
In this work we explore the temporal dynamics of spatial heterogeneity during the process of tumorigenesis from healthy tissue. We utilize a spatial stochastic process model of mutation accumulation and clonal expansion in a structured…