The Role of Game Theory in Understanding the Spread of Cancer Cells
Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0346
Essentially, game theory is the study of how and why decisions are made, often influenced by predictions of an opponent’s future actions. Game theory affords strategic-decision making in a myriad of settings, including predicting potential outcomes in politics, business models, and even cancer biology.
Helena Coggan and Karen M. Page’s paper discusses the co
ncept of evolutionary game theory, which considers populations of individuals interacting with one another to achieve reproductive fitness, and applies it to cancer modeling. Evolutionary game theory helps to explain precisely the rate at which cancerous mutations survive and spread through healthy tissue. The two types of games most applicable to explain cancer-cell behavior are the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Hawk-Dove game. The figure on the right illustrates a simple example of a Prisoner’s Dilemma game that Coggan and Page utilize to examine the relationship between cooperators (A-players) and defectors (B-players). In this case, the table contains the costs (c) and benefits (b) of interaction between the players. By analyzing the cooperation and defection strategies and using healthy and cancer cells as “players,” scientists can gauge a better idea of exactly which type of cell will have more favorable growth factor in the body.
After learning about the different types of games in lectures, it is interesting to observe the real-life applications of game theory. For example, the Hawk-Dove game discussed in lecture can be applied to real-life game theory because the healthy and cancer cells compete for shared resources (live tissue). Ultimately, studying these games is relevant to future cancer research because it can improve scientists’ understanding of cancer patient outcomes by modeling real-world anti-cancer treatments and analyzing clinical data.