Tughall: a Simulator of Cancer-Cell Evolution Based on the Hallmarks of Cancer and Tumor-Related Genes

The flood of recent cancer genomic data requires a coherent model that can sort out the findings to systematically explain clonal evolution and the resultant intra-tumor heterogeneity (ITH). Here, we present a new mathematical model designed to computationally simulate the evolution of cancer cells. The model connects the well-known hallmarks of cancer with the specific mutational states of tumor-related genes. The cell behavior phenotypes are stochastically determined, and the hallmarks probabilistically interfere with the phenotypic probabilities. In turn, the hallmark variables depend on the mutational states of tumor-related genes. Thus, our software can deepen our understanding of cancer-cell evolution and generation of ITH.