Investigation of the Migration/Proliferation Dichotomy and its Impact on Avascular Glioma Invasion

Gliomas are highly invasive brain tumors that exhibit high and spatially heterogeneous cell proliferation and motility rates. The interplay of proliferation and migration dynamics plays an important role in the invasion of these malignant tumors. We analyze the regulation of proliferation and migration processes with a lattice-gas cellular automaton (LGCA). We study and characterize the influence of the migration/proliferation dichotomy (also known as the “GO-or-Grow" mechanism) on avascular glioma invasion, in terms of invasion speed and width of the infiltration zone. We show that the invasive behavior of the (macroscopic) tumor colony is a highly complex phenomenon that cannot be extrapolated by the sole knowledge of the (microscopic) individual cell phenotype.