Fluctuations and noise in cancer development

© 2004 COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering.This paper explores fluctuations and noise in various facets of cancer development. The three areas of particular focus are the stochastic progression of cells to cancer, fluctuations of the tumor size during treatment, and noise in cancer cell signalling. We explore the stochastic dynamics of tumor growth and response to treatment using a Markov model, and fluctutions in tumor size in response to treatment using partial differential equations. We also explore noise within gene networks in cancer cells, and noise in inter-cell signalling.Matthew J. Berryman, Sabrina L. Spencer, Andrew G. Allison and Derek Abbot