Initial/boundary-value problems of tumor growth within a host tissue

TL;DR

This paper develops and analyzes multiphase mathematical models for tumor growth within host tissue, incorporating nutrient interactions and focusing on biological realism and mathematical properties like nonnegativity and uniqueness.

Contribution

It introduces modeling guidelines for tumor growth equations, addressing initial/boundary conditions and analyzing solution properties including existence, nonnegativity, and uniqueness.

Findings

Models ensure biological consistency and mathematical robustness.

Existence of solutions proven in one-dimensional steady-state case.

Qualitative properties like nonnegativity and boundedness established.

Abstract

This paper concerns multiphase models of tumor growth in interaction with a surrounding tissue, taking into account also the interplay with diffusible nutrients feeding the cells. Models specialize in nonlinear systems of possibly degenerate parabolic equations, which include phenomenological terms related to specific cell functions. The paper discusses general modeling guidelines for such terms, as well as for initial and boundary conditions, aiming at both biological consistency and mathematical robustness of the resulting problems. Particularly, it addresses some qualitative properties such as a priori nonnegativity, boundedness, and uniqueness of the solutions. Existence of the solutions is studied in the one-dimensional time-independent case.