1. M.A. Al-Radhawi and E.D. Sontag. Analysis of a reduced model of epithelial-mesenchymal fate determination in cancer metastasis as a singularly-perturbed monotone system. In C.A. Beattie, P. Benner, M. Embree, S. Gugercin, and S. Lefteriu, editors, Realization and model reduction of dynamical systems. Springer Nature, 2022. Note: (Previous version: 2020 preprint in arXiv:1910.11311.). [PDF] Keyword(s): epithelial-mesenchymal transition, miRNA, singular perturbations, monotone systems, oncology, cancer, metastasis, reaction networks, reaction networks, systems biology. Abstract:

   Metastasis can occur after malignant cells transition from the epithelial phenotype to the mesenchymal phenotype. This transformation allows cells to migrate via the circulatory system and subsequently settle in distant organs after undergoing the reverse transition. The core gene regulatory network controlling these transitions consists of a system made up of coupled SNAIL/miRNA-34 and ZEB1/miRNA-200 subsystems. In this work, we formulate a mathematical model and analyze its long-term behavior. We start by developing a detailed reaction network with 24 state variables. Assuming fast promoter and mRNA kinetics, we then show how to reduce our model to a monotone four-dimensional system. For the reduced system, monotone dynamical systems theory can be used to prove generic convergence to the set of equilibria for all bounded trajectories. The theory does not apply to the full model, which is not monotone, but we briefly discuss results for singularly-perturbed monotone systems that provide a tool to extend convergence results from reduced to full systems, under appropriate time separation assumptions.




2. L. Liu, G. Duclos, B. Sun, J. Lee, A. Wu, Y. Kam, E.D. Sontag, H.A. Stone, J.C. Sturm, R.A. Gatenby, and R.H. Austin. Minimization of thermodynamic costs in cancer cell invasion. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 110:1686-1691, 2013. [PDF] Keyword(s): chemotaxis, cancer, metastasis. Abstract:

   This paper shows that metastatic breast cancer cells cooperatively invade a 3D collagen matrix while following a glucose gradient. The front cell leadership is dynamic, and invading cells act in a cooperative manner by exchanging leaders in the invading front.

1. M. Ali Al-Radhawi, K. Manoj, D. Jatkar, A. Duvall, D. Del Vecchio, and E.D. Sontag. Competition for binding targets results in paradoxical effects for simultaneous activator and repressor action. In Proc. 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2024. Note: To appear. Preprint in arXiv.[PDF] Keyword(s): resource competition, epigenetics, systems biology, synthetic biology, gene regulatory systems. Abstract:

   In the context of epigenetic transformations in cancer metastasis, a puzzling effect was recently discovered, in which the elimination (knock-out) of an activating regulatory element leads to increased (rather than decreased) activity of the element being regulated. It has been postulated that this paradoxical behavior can be explained by activating and repressing transcription factors competing for binding to other possible targets. It is very difficult to prove this hypothesis in mammalian cells, due to the large number of potential players and the complexity of endogenous intracellular regulatory networks. Instead, this paper analyzes this issue through an analogous synthetic biology construct which aims to reproduce the paradoxical behavior using standard bacterial gene expression networks. The paper first reviews the motivating cancer biology work, and then describes a proposed synthetic construct. A mathematical model is formulated, and basic properties of uniqueness of steady states and convergence to equilibria are established, as well as an identification of parameter regimes which should lead to observing such paradoxical phenomena (more activator leads to less activity at steady state). A proof is also given to show that this is a steady-state property, and for initial transients the phenomenon will not be observed. This work adds to the general line of work of resource competition in synthetic circuits.

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