A repository containing the code and data generated for an upcoming paper reconciling conflicting results on fixation probability of mutant, cancerous stem cells in a wild-type population as a function of stem-cell plasticity.

The cancer stem cell hypothesis claims that tumor invasion, metastasis, and maintenance is driven by a small niche of the total cancer cell population called Cancer Stem Cells. These CSCs can differentiate into specialised, progenitor cells or reproduce into new CSCs. While it was once held that this differentiation pathway was unidirectional, recent research has demonstrated that differentiated cells are more plastic than initially considered. In particular, differentiated cells can de-differentiate and recover their stem-like capacity. Two recent papers have considered how this rate of plasticity affects the evolutionary dynamic of an invasive, malignant population of stem cells and differentiated cells into existing tissue [1, 2]. These papers arrive at seemingly opposing conclusions, one claiming that increased plasticity results in increased invasive potential, and the other that increased plasticity decreases invasive potential. This report demonstrates that what really matters when determining the effect on invasive potential is how one distributes this increased plasticity between the compartments of resident and mutant-type cells.

1. Mahdipour-Shirayeh, A., Kaveh, K., Kohandel, M., and Sivaloganathan, S. (2017). Phenotypic heterogeneity in modeling cancer evolution. PloS one, 12(10):e0187000.

2. Wodarz, D. (2017). Effect of cellular de-differentiation on the dynamics and evolution of tissue and tumor cells in mathematical models with feedback regulation. bioRxiv, page 204214.