Competition driven cancer immunoediting

TL;DR

This paper presents a mathematical model of tumor-immune interactions centered on competition for glucose, revealing dynamics like tumor elimination, dormancy, or growth driven by resource competition.

Contribution

It introduces a predator-prey model incorporating glucose competition between cancer cells and immune cells, highlighting its impact on tumor-immune dynamics.

Findings

Glucose competition can lead to tumor dormancy or elimination.

Immune cells' energy demands influence tumor progression.

Resource competition dynamics can explain various tumor behaviors.

Abstract

It is a well-established fact that tumors up-regulate glucose consumption to meet increasing demands for rapidly available energy by switching to purely glycolytic mode of glucose metabolism. What is often neglected is that cytotoxic cells of the immune system also have increased energy demands and also switch to pure glycolysis when they are in an activated state. Moreover, while cancer cells can revert back to aerobic metabolism, rapidly proliferating cytotoxic lymphocytes are incapable of performing their function when adequate resources are lacking. Consequently, in the tumor microenvironment there must exist competition for the common resources between cancer cells and the cells of the immune system, which may drive a lot of the tumor-immune dynamics. Proposed here is a model of tumor-immune-glucose interactions, formulated as a predator-prey-common resource type system, which allows to investigate possible dynamical behaviors that may arise as a result of competition for glucose, including tumor elimination, tumor dormancy and unrestrained tumor growth.