Spread of premalignant mutant clones and cancer initiation in multilayered tissue

Over 80% of human cancers originate from the epithelium, which covers outer and inner surfaces organs blood vessels. In stratified bottom layers are occupied by stem stem-like cells that continually divide replenish upper layers. this work, we study spread premalignant mutant clones cancer initiation in epithelium using biased voter model on stacked two-dimensional lattices. Our main result is an estimate propagation speed a clone, asymptotically precise cancer-relevant weak-selection limit. We use our to under two-step mutational cancer, includes computing distributions time size clone giving rise cancer. work quantifies effect epithelial tissue thickness process carcinogenesis, thereby contributing emerging understanding spatial evolutionary dynamics