Stochastic differential equation modelling of cancer cell migration and tissue invasion
Abstract
Invasion of the surrounding tissue is a key aspect of cancer growth and spread involving a coordinated effort between cell migration and matrix degradation, and has been the subject of mathematical modelling for almost 30 years. In this current paper we address a long-standing question in the field of cancer cell migration modelling. Namely, identify the migratory pattern and spread of individual cancer cells, or small clusters of cancer cells, when the macroscopic evolution of the cancer cell colony is dictated by a specific partial differential equation (PDE). We show that the usual heuristic understanding of the diffusion and advection terms of the PDE being one-to-one responsible for the random and biased motion of the solitary cancer cells, respectively, is not precise. On the contrary, we show that the drift term of the correct stochastic differential equation scheme that dictates the individual cancer cell migration, should account also for the divergence of the diffusion of the PDE. We support our claims with a number of numerical experiments and computational simulations.
Citation
Katsaounis , D , Chaplain , M A J & Sfakianakis , N 2023 , ' Stochastic differential equation modelling of cancer cell migration and tissue invasion ' , Journal of Mathematical Biology , vol. 87 , 8 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-023-01934-4
Publication
Journal of Mathematical Biology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0303-6812Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2023. This open access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.
Description
Funding: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EP/S030875/1.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.