Intercellular competitive growth dynamics with microenvironmental feedback

Abstract

Changes in the state of the microenvironment in organisms can affect cellular interactions. In this paper, we introduce the microenvironmental feedback mechanism to the growth dynamics of multicellular organisms, where microenvironmental feedback can affect the growth of multicellular organisms by changing the cellular competitive ability. We show that the microenvironmental feedback mechanism can delay aging, but cancer cells will grow uncontrollably due to the emergence of the tumor microenvironment(TME). We investigate the effect of the feedback rate of cancer cell fitness to the microenvironment and find the average lifespan shortened is close to the data for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Canada from 1980 to 2015. We also study the impact of the competitive ability of cancer cells on the lifespan of the organism and find that there is an optimal value of cancer cell competitive ability that makes the organism live the longest under the same conditions. These results will provide mathematical theoretical help for targeted therapies aimed at TME