Stationary solutions of a free boundary problem modeling the growth of vascular tumors with a necrotic core

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes stationary solutions of a free boundary model for vascular tumor growth with a necrotic core, establishing existence, uniqueness, and symmetry-breaking bifurcations of solutions.

Contribution

It provides a mathematical framework for existence, uniqueness, and bifurcation analysis of stationary tumor solutions with necrosis, including symmetry-breaking phenomena.

Findings

Existence of a unique radially symmetric steady-state solution for given parameters.

Identification of bifurcation points leading to non-radially symmetric solutions.

Demonstration of symmetry-breaking bifurcations in tumor growth models.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a rigorous mathematical analysis of a free boundary problem modeling the growth of a vascular solid tumor with a necrotic core. If the vascular system supplies the nutrient concentration $\sigma$ to the tumor at a rate $\beta$, then $\frac{\partial\sigma}{\partial\bf n}+\beta(\sigma-\bar\sigma)=0$ holds on the tumor boundary, where $\bf n$ is the unit outward normal to the boundary and $\bar\sigma$ is the nutrient concentration outside the tumor. The living cells in the nonnecrotic region proliferate at a rate $\mu$. We show that for any given $\rho>0$, there exists a unique $R\in(\rho,\infty)$ such that the corresponding radially symmetric solution solves the steady-state necrotic tumor system with necrotic core boundary $r=\rho$ and outer boundary $r=R$; moreover, there exist a positive integer $n^{**}$ and a sequence of $\mu_n$, symmetry-breaking stationary solutions bifurcate from the radially symmetric stationary solution for each $\mu_n$ (even $n\ge n^{**})$.