Emergent properties of a computational model of tumour growth
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Computational Biology, Oncology, Computational Science
- Keywords
- cancer, evolution, computational model, carcinogenesis, tissue organisation field theory, somatic mutation theory, modelling, genetic algorithm, tumour growth
- Copyright
- © 2016 Pantziarka
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Emergent properties of a computational model of tumour growth. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1558v4 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1558v4
Abstract
While there have been enormous advances in our understanding of the genetic drivers and molecular pathways involved in cancer in recent decades, there also remain key areas of dispute with respect to fundamental theories of cancer. The accumulation of vast new datasets from genomics and other fields, in addition to detailed descriptions of molecular pathways, cloud the issues and lead to ever greater complexity. One strategy in dealing with such complexity is to develop models to replicate salient features of the system and therefore to generate hypotheses which reflect on the real system. A simple tumour growth model is outlined which displays emergent behaviours that correspond to a number of clinically relevant phenomena including tumour growth, intra-tumour heterogeneity, growth arrest and accelerated repopulation following cytotoxic insult. Analysis of model data suggests that the processes of cell competition and apoptosis are key drivers of these emergent behaviours. Questions are raised as to the role of cell competition and cell death in physical cancer growth and the relevance that these have to cancer research in general is discussed.
Author Comment
Updated with additional validation of growth parameters.