Stochastic model for computer simulation of the number of cancer cells and lymphocytes in homogeneous sections of cancer tumors

Arnulfo Castellanos-Moreno, Alejandro Castellanos-Jaramillo, Adalberto Corella-Madueño, Sergio Gutiérrez-López, Rodrigo Rosas-Burgos

(Submitted on 14 Oct 2014)

We deal with a small enough tumor section to consider it homogeneous, such that populations of lymphocytes and cancer cells are independent of spatial coordinates. A stochastic model based in one step processes is developed to take into account natural birth and death rates. Other rates are also introduced to consider medical treatment: natural birth rate of lymphocytes and cancer cells; induced death rate of cancer cells due to self-competition, and other ones caused by the activated lymphocytes acting on cancer cells. Additionally, a death rate of cancer cells due to induced apoptosis is considered. Weakness due to the advance of sickness is considered by introducing a lymphocytes death rate proportional to proliferation of cancer cells.
Simulation is developed considering different combinations of the parameters and its values, so that several strategies are taken into account to study the effect of anti-angiogenic drugs as well the self-competition between cancer cells. Immune response, with the presence of a kind of specialized lymphocytes, is introduced such that they appear once cancer cells are detected. Induced apoptosis of cancer cells is introduced to model the action of several drugs under development right now. Besides, the model predicts the cancer relapse even from a very small number of cells. Simulation is done by using Gillespie algorithm.

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