A multiscale view of nonlinear diffusion in biology: From cells to tissues

Abstract

This paper presents a review on the mathematical tools for the derivation of macroscopic models in biology from the underlying description at the scale of cells as it is delivered by a kinetic theory model. The survey is followed by an overview of research perspectives. The derivation is inspired by the Hilbert’s method, known in classic kinetic theory, which is here applied to a broad class of kinetic equations modeling multicellular dynamics. The main difference between this class of equations with respect to the classical kinetic theory consists in the modeling of cell interactions which is developed by theoretical tools of stochastic game theory rather than by laws of classical mechanics. The survey is focused on the study of nonlinear diffusion and source terms.