Today I met Chris Wallace from Oxford’s department of economics to discuss about potential ways to extend a model I am working on to use game theory to study Gatenby’s hypothesis that glycolysis facilitates the emergence of invasive phenotypes.

The current game theoretical models of cancer concentrate on things like how many phenotypes (with different levels of aggressiveness) will be present in a tumour in the long run if there are no external changes (i.e. therapy). For the dynamics there is no much more than simulations which, for theoreticians, can be valid but is not ideal. This is not just a question of aesthetics but also of having a complete understanding of what are all the potential dynamics within a tumour (and not the ones that, a priori, might be more promising to whoever does the simulations).

So it looks like high time to get to know replicator equations to see how different tumour cells interact and who changing these interactions could lead to something useful.

Note to myself: Evolutionary Game Theory at Amazon