A Multi-type Branching Process to Account for Phenotypic Heterogeneity in Radiotherapy Responses

International audienceThis article addresses the modeling issue of phenotypic heterogeneity in tumors treated by radiotherapy. Cell population is described as a superposition of independent dynamics. The behavior of each cell is defined by a finite collection of states expressing the possible evolution of some phenotypes after treatment. The population dynamics is given by an age-dependent multi-type branching process. From this representation, we use classical probabilistic tools to derive equations of the mean population size and its variance. Those equations have been implemented into Scilab© to perform numerical simulations. The latter allows biologists to test different assumptions and more particularly to estimate the effect of each phenotypic state on the treatment response