#20 · Systems biology

Quantitative models probe tumor evolution, drug resistance and immune microenvironment…

The dominant thread is inference of tumor population dynamics from quantitative models constrained by published, tumor-level, or experimental data. A parsimonious ODE model of caspase-mediated apoptosis in prostate cancer, calibrated to published data from three agents, is examined by global sensitivity analysis to probe intrinsic drug resistance. A phenotype-structured PDE framework treats proliferation heterogeneity as a heritable trait under resource competition and trade-offs, with in silico treatment-response analyses. A data-driven cancer cell fraction analysis of 4,146 TCGA tumors defines four pan-cancer evolutionary signatures linked to shifts in the tumor immune microenvironment. What is new is pairing parameter-level sensitivity analysis and heritable-trait modeling with pan-cancer, tumor-level evolutionary signatures. The studies differ in scale and method, so the shared element is quantitative inference rather than a single mechanism.