Ecological Dynamics of Pro-tumor and Anti-tumor Teams in the Tumor Microenvironment

Abstract

Tumor growth occurs within a complex tumor microenvironment (TME) composed of many interacting cell types. The immune cell types in TME tend to organize into two functional communities: a pro-tumor team and an anti-tumor team, each internally cooperative but mutually antagonistic forming a two-team ecosystem. Quantitatively predicting the ecological outcomes of such interactions remains challenging due to cellular diversity and interaction variability, and the exact dynamical regimes accessible to such a two-team ecosystem remain unknown. Here, we model tumor-immune interactions as a structured ecosystem with two competing teams using a generalized Lotka-Volterra framework and analyze it using the cavity method. We derive phase diagrams that delineate when these two communities coexist, when one dominates, and how these outcomes depend on intra-team cooperation, cross-team inhibition, and ecological heterogeneity. Our work provides a foundation for understanding tumor-immune dynamics from a community ecology perspective.