Figure 6.
Macroscopic-scale functional relationships as emergent phenomena from microscopic models. The volume-averaged behavior of an agent-based model of ductal carcinal in situ (DCIS)—a type of breast cancer where growth is constrained to a breast duct—was analyzed to postulate a Michaelis-Menten type relationship between oxygen (σ) and proliferation (PI) as an emergent phenomenon of the model (80)—see the solid curves above. This hypothesized relationship was later validated by analyzing post-mastectomy Ki-67 immunohistochemical data for proliferation in two separate breast ducts (dashed curves), with excellent qualitative and quantitative agreement (81).