Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Understanding How Cancer Adapts To Stress And Therapy Using Evolutionary Game Theory, Mariyah Pressley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adaptive responses in cancer promote disease initiation, progression, and resistance to treatment. Understanding the underlying evolutionary dynamics behind these adaptive responses is crucial for developing effective therapeutic strategies. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) has proven a useful tool in analyzing how different cellular behaviors and evolutionary forces shape the dynamics of tumor growth, response to therapy, and the emergence of resistance. In this dissertation, we utilize EGT to understand the adaptive responses of cancer through the lens of ecology and evolution. By employing fitness-generating models and exploring various ecological contexts, we aimed to unveil critical factors influencing aggressive cell phenotypes, treatment …