Cancer Stem Cell Plasticity as Tumor Growth Promoter and Catalyst of Population Collapse

Figure 3

(a) Possible outcomes of the cancer stem cell (CSC) division when one considers survival of CSC with proliferation potential (). (b) Probability of spontaneous tumor remission, , described by , for different values of probability that the nonstem cancer cell will die before proliferation attempt, , and plasticity event frequencies, . (c) Spontaneous remission of all 100 simulated tumors initiated with single CSC equipped with proliferation capacity and probability of symmetric division . (d) Spontaneous remission of 17 out of 100 simulated tumors initiated with single CSC equipped with proliferation capacity and probability of symmetric division .

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