Fig 7. Mutant selection windows drive drug resistance in simulated cancer therapy.

Summary of tumor therapy simulations. Each column corresponds to a different drug diffusion characteristic length L. (A) Mutant selection window plots for different length scales resulting from drug diffusion from two blood vessels. The net loss regime represents a drug concentration that completely inhibits cell division. (B) Example simulations corresponding to the characteristic length in A. Black grid points indicate no cells at that position. (C) Average timecourse of total number of cells (blue) and the number of drug resistant cells (orange). “Drug resistant” refers to any cell that is not wild-type. Traces represent the average of N = 10 simulations and are shaded by the standard error. In many cases, the standard error is less than the width of the plot line. Gray vertical bars indicate the “drug on” time.