UAlberta Math Biology Seminar: Ryan Thiessen

Understanding the dynamics of cancer cell migration is crucial for developing effective treatment strategies. The "go-or-grow" hypothesis posits a trade-off between proliferation and migration in cancerous cells. In this talk, we present a mathematical framework for analyzing go-or-grow type systems using reaction-diffusion equation coupled to an ODE. We investigate the existence and behavior of traveling wave solutions, establishing connections with the well-known Fisher-KPP equation. In addition, we will discuss the go-or-grow system in the context of the critical domain problem, and establish conditions on the domain size for which a non-trivial population exists.