Speaker
Description
Understanding how the tumor microenvironment influences interactions between tumor cells and the immune system is a major question in mathematical oncology. In particular, the spatial organization of nutrient sources and immune cell recruitment may strongly affect tumor progression and immune control.
In this work, we study this question using a continuum mixture model describing nutrient-dependent tumor growth, mechanical interactions within the tissue and the extracellular matrix, and the dynamics of anti- and pro-tumoral immune cell populations. External sources of nutrients and immune cells are included in the model, and their spatial location is treated as a key parameter.
Using numerical simulations, we analyze how different spatial configurations of these sources affect tumor–immune dynamics. The results show a strong sensitivity of the system to the relative position of nutrient and immune sources. In particular, small changes in distance can significantly delay tumor growth, while some configurations lead to stable states where tumor mass and immune activity coexist.
These results highlight the important role of spatial heterogeneity in the tumor microenvironment and show that its geometric organization can strongly influence the balance between tumor progression and immune control.
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}
