Game theory confirms that homogeneous tumors are more aggressive

Mathematics, histopathology and genomics have come together to confirm that more aggressive renal clear-cell carcinomas have lower levels of intra-humatic heterogeneity, that is, they have fewer different cell types. The study, conducted by professor Annick Laruelle Ikerbasque of the UPV/EHU, supports the hypothesis that therapeutic strategies should be applied to maintain the high levels of heterogeneity of tumor cells, in order to slow the evolution of cancer and improve its survival.

To reach this conclusion, it has been based on game theory. Game theory helps to understand the interactions between cancer cells. Specifically, the game Belatz-paloma is a mathematical tool developed to analyze cooperation and competence in biology. When applied to cancer cell collectivities, it explains the behavior of cancer cells when competing for an external resource. In the game, to get a resource, cells can act aggressively, like a hawk, or passively like a dove.

In light cell renal carcinoma, very aggressive, the game theory has been used to study bilateral interactions between cells in two different scenarios: one is of low tumor heterogeneity because only two types of tumor cells compete for one resource; the other is of great tumor heterogeneity, since this competition occurs between three types of tumor cells. Thus, it has demonstrated that some of the fundamentals of intra-humoral heterogeneity, histopathologically and genomically confirmed, are based on mathematics.

The work has been published in the journal Trends in Cancer, in collaboration with researchers from Biocruces, the San Giovanni Bosco Hospital in Turin and the Pontificia Unibersidade Católica de Rio de Janeiro, and states that it can have important practical repercussions in the clinical treatment of malignant tumors.