Nonlinear waves in a simple model of high-grade glioma

Abstract

Abstract We present an analysis of a mathematical model describing the key features of the most frequent and aggressive type of primary brain tumor: glioblastoma. The model captures the salient physiopathological characteristics of this type of tumor: invasion of the normal brain tissue, cell proliferation and the formation of a necrotic core. Our study, based on phase space analysis, geometric perturbation theory, exact solutions and numerical simulations, proves the existence of bright solitary waves in the tumor coupled with kink and anti-kink fronts for the normal tissue and the necrotic core. Finally, we study the linear stability of the solutions to calculate the time of tumor recurrence.