Direct and indirect P-glycoprotein transfers in MCF7 breast cancer cells

The efflux protein P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is over expressed in many cancer cells and has a known capacity to confer multi-drug resistance to cytotoxic therapies. We provide a mathematical model for the direct cell-to-cell transfer of proteins between cells and the indirect transfer between cells and the surrounding liquid. After a mathematical analysis of the model, we construct an adapted numerical scheme and give some numerical simulations. We observe that we obtain a better fit with the experimental data when we take into account the indirect transfer of the protein released in a dish. This quantity, usually neglected by the experimenters, seems to influence the results.