Modeling the Multiple Myeloma Vicious Cycle: Signaling Across the Bone Marrow Microenvironment

Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell cancer that leads to a dysregulated bone remodeling process. We present a partial differential equation model describing the dynamics of bone remodeling with the presence of myeloma tumor cells. The model explicitly takes into account the roles of osteoclasts, osteoblasts, precursor cells, stromal cells, osteocytes, and tumor cells. Previous models based on ordinary differential equations make the simplifying assumption that the bone and tumor cells are adjacent to each other. However, in actuality, these cell populations are separated by the bone marrow. Our model takes this separation into account by including the diffusion of chemical factors across the marrow, which can be viewed as communication between the tumor and bone. Additionally, this model incorporates the growth of the tumor and the diminishing bone mass by utilizing a “moving boundary.” We present numerical simulations that qualitatively validate our model’s description of the cell population dynamics.