Mathematics Colloquium: John Lowengrub (UC Irvine)

Most tissues are hierarchically organized into lineages, which are sets of progenitor-progeny relationships where the cells differ progressively in their character due to differentiation. It is increasingly recognized that lineage progression occurs in solid tumors. In this talk, we develop a multispecies continuum model to simulate the dynamics of cell lineages in solid tumors. The model accounts for spatiotemporally varying cell proliferation and death mediated by the heterogeneous distribution of oxygen and soluble chemical factors. Together, these regulate the rates of self-renewal and differentiation of the different cells within the lineages and lead to the development of heterogenous cell distributions and formation of niche-like environments for stem cells. As demonstrated in the talk, the feedback processes are found to play a critical role in tumor progression, the development of morphological instability, and response to treatment.