Abstract
Cancer can be seen as an evolutionary disease, where natural selection
works on the cells in an organism to promote traits that are detrimental to
the organism. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is a field using the methods
of game theory, which is usually concerned with the behaviour of rational
agents, to model adaptive systems. The basis for EGT is that the stable rest
points of the adaptive system correspond to stable equilibrium solutions to
related games.
EGT has been used to model the cellular evolution in cancer with focus
on the interactions between different cancer cells, and between cancer
cells and normal cells. This thesis is an attempt to model the relationship
between the host and the cancer cells using game theory.
Simplified systems of differential equations simultaneously describing
the cellular evolution within organisms as well as organismal evolution
are presented, and a correspondence between stable rest points of these
systems and stable equilibrium solutions to a class of extensive games are
shown.
The game theoretical models are applied to modified versions of cell-
cell interaction games from the literature. The results show that it is
evolutionarily plausible for multicellular organisms to develop tactical
elements in their anti-cancer strategies.