Role of tumor-associated neutrophils in regulation of tumor growth in lung cancer development: A mathematical model

PLoS One. 2019 Jan 28;14(1):e0211041. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211041. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Neutrophils display rapid and potent innate immune responses in various diseases. Tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) however either induce or overcome immunosuppressive functions of the tumor microenvironment through complex tumor-stroma crosstalk. We developed a mathematical model to address the question of how phenotypic alterations between tumor suppressive N1 TANS, and tumor promoting N2 TANs affect nonlinear tumor growth in a complex tumor microenvironment. The model provides a visual display of the complex behavior of populations of TANs and tumors in response to various TGF-β and IFN-β stimuli. In addition, the effect of anti-tumor drug administration is incorporated in the model in an effort to achieve optimal anti-tumor efficacy. The simulation results from the mathematical model were in good agreement with experimental data. We found that the N2-to-N1 ratio (N21R) index is positively correlated with aggressive tumor growth, suggesting that this may be a good prognostic factor. We also found that the antitumor efficacy increases when the relative ratio (Dap) of delayed apoptotic cell death of N1 and N2 TANs is either very small or relatively large, providing a basis for therapeutically targeting prometastatic N2 TANs.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Interferon-beta / metabolism
  • Lung Neoplasms / drug therapy
  • Lung Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Lung Neoplasms / pathology
  • Models, Biological*
  • Neoplasm Proteins / metabolism
  • Neutrophils / metabolism*
  • Neutrophils / pathology
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta / metabolism
  • Tumor Microenvironment*

Substances

  • Neoplasm Proteins
  • Transforming Growth Factor beta
  • Interferon-beta

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Konkuk University 2015 Research fund (www.konkuk.ac.kr, Y.J.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.