Evolutionary dynamics of cancer: from epigenetic regulation to cell population dynamics -- mathematical model framework, applications, and open problems (Q2303916)

Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body.Abnormal stem cell regeneration is essential to cancer development. In recent years the use of mathematics in cancer research lead to the construction of mathematical models for heterogeneous population dynamics based on the stochastic transition of epigenetic states during cell division. In this work it is presented a general mathematical framework for modeling the evolutionary dynamics of cancer with plasticity and heterogeneity in cells.It is obtained a delay differential-integral equation (3.4) which provides the basic dynamical equation of heterogeneous stem cell regeneration with epigenetic transition. Finally the author presents the mathematical problems related to the proposed mathematical model. Solutions of these problems are crucial for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of cancer. These considerations can serve as guidelines for related studies in the future.