"Cancer-immune coevolution dictated by antigenic mutation accumulation"Morison, ChristoThe immune system is one of the body's first lines of defence against the emergence of cancer. When effector cells try to suppress the tumour, the cancer cells can respond in kind by evolving methods of escape or inhibition. Knowledge of this coevolutionary system and the selection taking place within it can help us understand tumour-immune dynamics both during tumorigenesis but also when treatments such as immunotherapies are applied. Here, we present a stochastic individual-based branching process model of mutation accumulation, where random mutations arising in the cancer give rise to responding immune populations. We find that the parameters governing interactions between the cancer and effector cells induce different outcomes, such as suppression and evasion. While it is hard to measure the cancer-immune dynamics directly in patients, genetic information of the cancer may indicate the presence of such interactions and selection. Thus, bulk and single-cell sequencing of a tumour may give information about the coevolutionary dynamics. |
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