Tumor stabilization induced by T-cell recruitment fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how random fluctuations in T-cell recruitment affect tumor dynamics using a stochastic model, revealing noise-induced transitions, hysteresis effects, and chaos-order transformations that influence tumor stability and immune response.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic mathematical model to analyze the impact of recruitment fluctuations on tumor-immune interactions, uncovering new noise-induced phenomena and bifurcation behaviors.

Findings

Noise-induced transition from oscillatory to tumor-dominant regimes.

Hysteresis stabilizes tumors at carrying capacity, risking immune extinction.

Weak noise can trigger transitions near bifurcation points.

Abstract

The influence of random fluctuations on the recruitment of effector cells towards a tumor is studied by means of a stochastic mathematical model. Aggressively growing tumors are confronted against varying intensities of the cell-mediated immune response for which chaotic and periodic oscillations coexist together with stable tumor dynamics. A thorough parametric analysis of the noise-induced transition from this oscillatory regime to complete tumor dominance is carried out. A hysteresis phenomenon is uncovered, which stabilizes the tumor at its carrying capacity and drives the healthy and the immune cell populations to their extinction. Furthermore, it is shown that near a crisis bifurcation such transitions occur under weak noise intensities. Finally, the corresponding noise-induced chaos-order transformation is analyzed and discussed in detail.