Friday, June 18, 2010

Jasmine Foo, Sloan Kettering, "Evolution of resistance to cancer therapy"

Evolutionary model of resistance
  • Stochastic birth/death process: 
    • within any time interval, the following can happen:
      • cell division
      • cell death
      • nothing happens
    • Mutation might happen during cell division (mutation rate u)
    • Multiple mutations might confer resistance to the same therapy
      • evolve according to the same process as above
  • Questions model can answer:
    • prob of de novo resistance
    • expected size of resistaant pop.
    • diversity of resistant pop (number of celltypes, relative pop sizes)
    • prob of resistance development for treatment schedules
  • Treatment schedule models birth and death rates of sensitive and resistant cell populations
Resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML):
  • Gleevec (imatinib) inhibits activity of oncoprotein BCR-ABL
  • point mutation in kinase domain confer resistance to this drug
  • Prior to treatment: wide variety of cell types in population

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