Quantifying the Landscape for Development and Cancer from a Core Cancer Stem Cell Circuit

Cancer presents a serious threat to human health. The understanding of the cell fate determination during development and tumor-genesis remains challenging in current cancer biology. It was suggested that cancer stem cell (CSC) may arise from normal stem cells or be transformed from normal differentiated cells. This gives hints on the connection between cancer and development. However, the molecular mechanisms of these cell-type transitions and the CSC formation remain elusive. We quantified landscape, dominant paths, and switching rates between cell types from a core gene regulatory network for cancer and development. Stem cell, CSC, cancer, and normal cell types emerge as basins of attraction on associated landscape. The dominant paths quantify the transition processes among CSC, stem cell, normal cell, and cancer cell attractors. Transition actions of the dominant paths are shown to be closely related to switching rates between cell types, but not always to the barriers in between, because of the presence of the curl flux. During the process of P53 gene activation, landscape topography changes gradually from a CSC attractor to a normal cell attractor. This confirms the roles of P53 of preventing the formation of CSC through suppressing self-renewal and inducing differentiation. By global sensitivity analysis according to landscape topography and action, we identified key regulations determining cell-type switchings and suggested testable predictions. From landscape view, the emergence of the CSCs and the associated switching to other cell types are the results of underlying interactions among cancer and developmental marker genes. This indicates that the cancer and development are intimately connected. This landscape and flux theoretical framework provides a quantitative way to understand the underlying mechanisms of CSC formation and interplay between cancer and development.