Figure 3.

Simulations of immune-mediated tumour dormancy assuming the three fits to predation decay. Predation strength is assumed to decay according to fit 1 in (a), fit 2 in (b) and fit 3 in (c). Cancer–immune phase portraits for each fit are shown in (d–f). Note that the recruitment is strong enough to increase the immune population sufficiently to compensate for the diminishing predation strength, thus maintaining the dormant state. Theoretically, in long time, this will require the immune population to grow infinitely large, which is unphysical.