12–17 Jul 2026
University of Graz
Europe/Vienna timezone

Agent-Based Model for Superficial Spreading Melanoma Reveals the Role of Cancer Hallmarks in Shaping Intratumor Heterogeneity and Tumor Morphology

15 Jul 2026, 11:10
20m
01.18 - SZ (University of Graz)

01.18 - SZ

University of Graz

42
Contributed Talk Mathematical Oncology Contributed Talks

Speaker

Khola Jamshad (University of Michigan)

Description

Advances in multiregion sequencing have revealed extensive intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) - the presence of genetically distinct subclones within a single tumor. ITH profoundly influences tumor behavior, including well-accepted hallmarks of cancer such as sustained proliferation, resistance to apoptosis, and immune evasion, and the emergence of therapeutic resistance. In this work, we introduce a hallmark-integrated branching evolution process agent-based model (BEP-HI) to study the emergence of ITH in superficial spreading melanoma (SSM) under coupled genetic, immune, and spatial selection pressures. We identify three distinct evolutionary ITH modes and demonstrate a mechanistic decoupling between tumor growth kinetics and heterogeneity. We further show that immune recruitment exerts the strongest influence on ITH, while motility of melanoma cells shapes complex morphologies in different ITH modes as observed in clinical SSM tumors. This work provides a biologically grounded computational framework for exploring how hallmark interactions shape ITH evolution, tumor behavior, and morphology.

Authors

Khola Jamshad (University of Michigan) Trachette Jackson (University of Michigan)

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