A generalized resource-allocation growth law reveals mechanisms of differential responses to intermittent androgen deprivation therapy in prostate cancer
Resource-limited growth frameworks often developed independently. Here, we derived a growth law by assuming a cell balancing internal competing resource demands and generalizing the growth signal through a shape parameter h, the trade-off exponent. In Liebig's single-limiting-resource regime, it recovers Droop's cell quota at h=1 and approaches Prater's growth efficiency as h grows large. h…
A groundbreaking growth law has been developed to explain the varying responses of prostate cancer to intermittent androgen deprivation therapy. This resource-limited growth framework, derived by balancing competing resource demands within cells, generalizes the growth signal through a shape parameter h. This parameter determines the sharpness of growth decline when allocation deviates from optimal levels, ultimately influencing the evolution of populations.
Researchers have applied this growth law to prostate cancer growth in patients undergoing cyclic intermittent androgen deprivation therapy, demonstrating its ability to accurately predict patient outcomes using longitudinal PSA and serum androgen measurements. The law shows that patients with "failing" cancer have a unique ability to adapt to a wide range of growth conditions with minimal cost, thus predicting treatment success or failure.
The findings suggest that the adaptive schedule employed in the therapy may be responsible for the observed differential outcomes, supporting the validity of this growth law in understanding resource-limited growth across various biological systems.
Written by urgent.news from bioRxiv's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
