The effect of intercellular adhesion on immune response of tumor cells at different early stages of tumor growth based on the modeling study

Abstract

Immunotherapy is a significant method of tumor treatment. It is necessary to investigate the underlying mechanism of the complicated tumor-immune interaction to enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy. In this study, a tumor cell-immune system model is developed to probe the role of cell-cell adhesion on immune response of tumor cells at different early stages of tumor growth with different initial number of tumor cells. The modeling results exhibit at the small initial number of tumor cells, tumor cells could be totally killed at one time under conditions of both low and high cell-cell adhesion. At the large initial number of tumor cells, the number of tumor cells with high adhesion experiences two drastic fluctuation, while low cell-cell adhesion allows tumor cells to show one obvious fluctuation and one weaker fluctuation. The distinctions in the immune-tumor cells interaction could be interpreted from the point view of distribution pattern of tumor cells and their secreted antigens. These findings may further interpret the potential factors to boost the immune system and provide powerful theoretical foundation for the clinical treatment.