Global weak solutions to a strongly degenerate haptotaxis model

TL;DR

This paper proves the global existence of weak solutions for a one-dimensional, strongly degenerate haptotaxis model describing tumor cell spread in tissue, combining reaction-diffusion and ODE components.

Contribution

It establishes the first rigorous proof of global weak solutions for a strongly degenerate haptotaxis model with tissue interaction.

Findings

Existence of global weak solutions is proven.

The model accounts for strong degeneracy in diffusion and haptotaxis.

Results extend mathematical understanding of tumor spread models.

Abstract

We consider a one-dimensional version of a model obtained in [C. Engwer, A. Hunt, and C. Surulescu: Effective equations for anisotropic glioma spread with proliferation: a multiscale approach and comparisons with previous settings, IMA J. Math. Med. Biol. (2015), doi: 10.1093/imammb/dqv030] and describing the anisotropic spread of tumor cells in a tissue network. The model consists of a reaction-diffusion-taxis equation for the density of tumor cells coupled with an ODE for the density of tissue fibers and allows for strong degeneracy both in the diffusion and the haptotaxis terms. In this setting we prove the global existence of weak solutions to an associated no-flux initial-boundary value problem.