The Tumor Invasion Paradox

The tumor invasion paradox relates to the artifact that a cancer that is exposed to increased cell death (for example through radiation), might spread and grow faster than before. The presence of cancer stem cells can convincingly explain this effect. In my talk I will use non-local and local reaction-diffusion type models to look at tumor growth and invasion speeds. We can show that in certain situations the invasion speed increases with increasing death rate - an invasion paradox (joint work with A. Shyntar and M. Rhodes).