Developers
Chay Paterson, Martin A. Nowak, Bartlomiej Waclaw.
Description of the technology
One of the hallmarks of cancer is the accumulation of driver mutations which increase the net reproductive rate of cancer cells and allow them to spread. This process has been studied in mathematical models of well mixed populations, and in computer simulations of
This technology proposes an exactly solvable mathematical model of a tumour featuring replication of cancer cells, mutations endowing cells with fitness advantage, and migration that causes cells to disperse. The model predicts a
Practical application
The technology is highly applicable for prognosis of cancer development. These predictions can be made for two aspects of cancer: growth laws, and genetic heterogeneity of tumours.
Analytical solubility (the possibility to get exact analytical solutions) means that the model works for tumours of any size, including large masses that need to be surgically removed, and it can be thus used to model cancer progression in humans.
The model can be used for computer simulation of tumors with the purpose of the drug discovery, the creation of the
Laboratories
- SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
- Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge (USA)
SynthSys-Synthetic & Systems Biology, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
Links
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39511Publications
- Paterson, C., Nowak, M.A., Waclaw, B. «An exactly solvable, spatial model of mutation accumulation in cancer." 6 Scientific Reports, (2016): 39511.
- Waclaw, B. et al. «A spatial model predicts that dispersal and cell turnover limit intratumour heterogeneity." 526 Nature, (2015): 261–264.
- Antal, T., Krapivsky, P. L. & Nowak, M. A. «Spatial evolution of tumors with successive driver mutations." Physical Review E 92 (2015).