Effect of an External Medium on Tumor Growth-induced Stress.docVIP

IAENG International Journal of Applied Mathematics, 42:4, IJAM_42_4_05 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Effect of an External Medium on Tumor Growth-induced Stress Matthias Ngwa and Ephraim Agyingi Abstract—This paper is concerned with modeling the me- delays the onset of necrosis, while reducing the growth rate chanical effect of an external isotropic elastic medium on the and saturation size of the tumor. Although consistent with stress induced by a growing tumor that is embedded within the medium. Two cases of nutrient availability to the tumor cells are considered: ambient nutrient concentration and diffusion limited nutrient at tumor boundary. The quantitative stress the experimental results at macroscopic level, the model in [19] is limited in that it does not allow for stress effects on cell proliferation and death rates. effect of each of these parameters, including the initial radius of the tumor and ratio of cell death rate to proliferation rate, on the tumor growth-induced stress are examined. Numerical sim- ulations that support experimental investigations are provided. The present paper is based on a previously reported simpler model by Jones et al. [20] which describes the development of a radially-symmetric, solid avascular tumor whose growth is regulated by a single externally supplied nutrient such as glucose or oxygen, that is assumed to diffuse freely throughout the tumor. Following their analysis, we extend the model to incorporate the stress effect of the external medium on the growth of a spherical tumor when nutrients are in abundance or limited supply at the periphery of the tumor. Index Terms—Tumor growth, Induce stress, Nutrient diffu- sion, External medium. I. INTRODUCTION The growth of a solid tumor is strongly in?uenced by its microenvironment. In addition to well documented mi- croenvironm