Mathematical Biology Seminar Fred Adler, UU Math and Biology Wednesday, February 14, 2024 1:45pm in LCB 222 An eco-evolutionary modeling approach to cancer, or “why not use the Gillespie method like a normal person?” Abstract: Recent detailed study of cells in adults shows that few if any cells are actually "normal." Instead, any renewing tissue is made up of lineages with increasing numbers of aberrant traits, many of which are associated with excess growth. Nonetheless, most incipient growths, whether in the primary tissue or at sites of metastasis, are contained by a wide range of controls both within the cell and in its microenvironment. I will present a modeling framework to address the continual emergence and control and extinction of abnormal cells, and analyze the time course of these dynamics with different subsets of controls in place, showing that it can reproduce observed age-incidence patterns of cancer and identify the processes that tend to break down first.