Development of a particle simulator on cancer cell signaling network with PC cluster system

In various cancer cells, over-expression or mutation of epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptors is experimentally observed, and induces abnormal activation of intracellular signaling proteins, followed by continuous cell proliferation via dysfunctional gene regulatory networks. Since the activation process of EGF receptors on cell membrane is complicated and not fully understood, it is still a challenging work to develop the mathematical model from the viewpoint of cancer therapy such as drug discovery. In this paper, we develop a particle simulator on EGF-induced activation of EGF receptors on cell membrane. The engine of our simulator is based on the Hybrid Null-event Monte Carlo algorithm. The advantage is that our simulator is capable of evaluating ”lateral signaling” of EGF receptors, and directly comparing to the corresponding experimental data that shows a distribution of activated EGF receptors.