Competition and Cooperation: Strategies for Cancer Growth

C.A. CONDAT; S.A. MENCHÓN

San Carlos de Bariloche

Workshop; LAWNP 05; 2005

Cancer growth is an extremely complex process, which is controlled by the competition for available nutrients and sometimes hindered or stopped by the action of external agents, i.e., therapies. We review the main strategies tumors use to ensure their continuous expansion: the development of subspecies with competitive advantages and angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels that feed the tumour. During angiogenesis, starving cancer cells signal the endothelial cells lining neighbouring capillaries that they must cooperate by moving, reproducing, and extending the capillary system. We also present some preliminary results that emerge from our modelling of immunotherapy, which suggest that a reason why a therapy may fail is precisely because it is successful at killing a large number of cancer cells, decreasing intraspecies competition and therefore accelerating survivor replication.