Giovanna Chiorino
Dept of Oncology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri,
Milano, Italy
and Universite de Pau, France
with P.Ubezio, O. Arino, M.Faretta, D.Tommasoni, P.Cappella
Abstract
A cell population can be structured by many variables, for example
the "age in the cycle", related to the DNA content of each cell.
Asynchronicity is an important issue in the study of cell populations,
and in particular of tumoral ones. Both "in vitro" treatments and
"in vivo" schemes of therapy are influenced by the behavior of the
untreated population which, under favourable conditions, is
characterized by asynchronous exponential growth.
This presentation is two fold: first of all some ongoing experimental
work with leukemia and ovarian cancer cells growing "in vitro" will
be discussed. This will include the study of the evolution of the "age"
distributions of some initially synchronized populations, showing a
quick desynchronization towards an asymptotic distribution where the
percentages of cells in each phase of the cycle are constant.
In a second part, the issue of theoretical modeling will be considered.
A brief review of classical models and some of the techniques used
in proving asynchronicity will be made. Perspectives for developing
such models and techniques in the frame presented in the first part
will be drawn.
