Modeling the pathway of breast cancer in the Middle East

Abstract

This paper proposed an approach for the identification of mutation mechanisms of breast cancer in women in four member countries of the Middle East Cancer Consortium i.e. Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus and Israel (Arabs and Jews). We set up multistage models including both gene mutation and the clonal expansion of intermediate cells. We fit the data-set related to the incidence of female breast cancer in the four member countries. Our simulation results show that the maximum number of driver mutations of breast epithelium stem cells of Egyptian women is 13, whereas there are 14 driver mutations in the genome of stem cells of female patients in Jordan, Cyprus and Israel (Arabs and Jews). In addition, the 3, 10, 5, 5 and 4 stage models are the optimal ones for the tumorigenesis of females in Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Israel (Arabs) and Israel (Jews), respectively. The genomic instability is caused by first three driver mutations.

Keywords

• breast cancer
• multi-stage model
• incidence rate
• chi square test