Cellular automata for the analysis of cancer invasion: Mathematics against cancer

Cancer cells display characteristic traits acquired in a step-wise manner during carcinogenesis. Some of these traits are autonomous growth, induction of angiogen- esis, invasion and metastasis. In this thesis, the focus is on one of the latest stages of tumor progression, tumor invasion. Tumor invasion emerges from the combined effect of tumor cell-cell and cell-microenvironment interactions, which can be studied with the help of mathematical analysis. Cellular automata (CA) can be viewed as simple models of self-organizing complex systems in which collective behavior can emerge out of an ensemble of many interacting "simple" components. In particular, we focus on an important class of CA, the so-called lattice-gas cellular automata (LGCA). Here, the principal tools of mathematical analysis of LGCA are the mean-field approximation and the corresponding Lattice Boltzmann equation. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate important aspects of tumor invasion, under the microscope of mathematical modeling and analysis: -Impact of the tumor environment -Effect of tumor cell proliferation and migration -Mechanisms of tumor invasion emergence -Computing in vivo tumor invasion