Cancer Biology and Evolution Program and Department of Integrated Mathematical Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, USA.
Tissue Development and Evolution Research Group, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Med Oncol. 2023 Feb 28;40(4):109. doi: 10.1007/s12032-023-01968-0.
In this didactic paper, we present a theoretical modeling framework, called the G-function, that integrates both the ecology and evolution of cancer to understand oncogenesis. The G-function has been used in evolutionary ecology, but has not been widely applied to problems in cancer. Here, we build the G-function framework from fundamental Darwinian principles and discuss how cancer can be seen through the lens of ecology, evolution, and game theory. We begin with a simple model of cancer growth and add on components of cancer cell competition and drug resistance. To aid in exploration of eco-evolutionary modeling with this approach, we also present a user-friendly software tool. By the end of this paper, we hope that readers will be able to construct basic G function models and grasp the usefulness of the framework to understand the games cancer plays in a biologically mechanistic fashion.
在这篇教学论文中，我们提出了一个理论建模框架，称为 G 函数，它将癌症的生态学和进化结合起来，以理解肿瘤发生。G 函数已被用于进化生态学，但尚未广泛应用于癌症问题。在这里，我们从基本的达尔文主义原则出发构建 G 函数框架，并讨论如何通过生态学、进化和博弈论的视角来看待癌症。我们从一个简单的癌症生长模型开始，并加入癌细胞竞争和耐药性的成分。为了帮助使用这种方法进行生态进化建模的探索，我们还提供了一个用户友好的软件工具。在本文结束时，我们希望读者能够构建基本的 G 函数模型，并掌握该框架的实用性，以便以生物学机制的方式理解癌症所玩的游戏。
