Cusp bifurcation in a metastatic regulatory network

Understanding the potential for cancers to metastasize is still relatively unknown. While many predictive methods may use deep learning or stochastic processes, we highlight a long standing mathematical concept that may be useful for modeling metastatic breast cancer systems. Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) can model cell state transitions by considering the pertinent environmental variables as well as the paths systems take over time. Bifurcation theory is a branch of dynamical systems which studies changes in the behavior of an ODE system while one or more parameters are varied. Many studies have applied concepts in one-parameter bifurcation theory to model biological network dynamics, and cell division. However, studies of two-parameter bifurcations are much more rare. Two-parameter bifurcations have not been studied in metastatic systems. Here we show how a specific two-parameter bifurcation phenomenon called a cusp bifurcation separates two qualitatively different metastatic cell state transitions modalities and propose a new perspective on defining such transitions based on mathematical theory. We hope the observations and verification methods detailed here may help in the understanding of metastatic potential from a basic biological perspective and in clinical settings.