Synergistic epistasis among cancer drivers can rescue early tumors from the accumulation of deleterious passengers
Fig 2
Synergistic epistasis can induce evolutionary rescue of receding tumors.
(A) Representative trajectory of a precancerous lesion subject to synergistic epistasis among drivers (green), superimposed to a representative trajectory without epistasis (brown). Parameter values: μ = 10−8, sd = 0.07, ϵ = 2, fe = 0.5, G = 70, N0 = 103. (B) Schematic of the dynamics of an initial receding tumor that is rescued by a trigger driver that appears after approximately 6000 cell divisions. Nc and represent the critical population sizes before and after the trigger event, respectively. For the rescue to occur, the trigger driver must appear before the population size drops below
.