Mathematical Modeling of the Evolution of the Exterior Boundary in Spheroidal Tumour Growth

Abstract

The present paper concerns the formulation and the evolution of the non symmetrical growth of an avascular cancerous cell colony in an analytical mathematical fashion. Although most of the existing research considers spherical tumours, here we work in the frame of a more general case of the prolate spheroidal geometry. The tumour lies inside a host spheroidal shell which provides vital nutrients, receives the debris of the dead cells and also transmittes to the tumour the pressure imposed by the surrounding on its exterior boundary. Under the aim of studying the evolution of the exterior tumour boundary, we focus on the exterior conditions under which such a geometrical structure can be sustained. To that purpose, the corresponding nutrient concentration, the inhibitor concentration and the pressure field are calculated analytically providing the necessary data for the evolution equation to be solvable. It turns out that an avascular tumour can exhibit a prolate spheroidal growth only if the external conditions for the nutrient supply and the transversally isotropic pressure field have a specific form, which is consistent with the tumour evolution. Additionally, our model exhibits a geometrical reduction to special cases and, mainly, to the spherical geometry in order to recover the existing results for the sphere.