Speaker:Kevin Flores,
Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Title:Competition in a tumor

Abstract: We model the competition in a tumor between cells with and without an important gene mutation, the p53 gene inactivation. The primary function of the p53 gene is to stop cell proliferation by inducing cell death. Here, we only consider the p53 gene regulation of cell death under low oxygen conditions. We use a multiscale model of avascular tumor growth: a lattice Monte Carlo model to describe cellular dynamics, and reaction-diffusion equations to describe the chemically dynamic tumor environment. With this model we can determine whether mutated p53 cells are upregulated by the low oxygen environment caused by the tumor formation itself. Using parameters derived from a malignant mouse mammary cell line, we found that the low oxygen environment increases the growth rate of the p53 mutated cells compared to their unaltered counterparts. The simulations also predict a change in the maximum growth rate of the tumor and final tumor saturation size due to the transition from unaltered p53 cell domination to p53-mutated cell domination.