Morphology transitions induced by chemotherapy in carcinomas "in situ"

TL;DR

This study investigates how different chemotherapy strategies influence tumor morphology, growth dynamics, and scaling laws in a nutrient-limited model of carcinoma in situ, revealing effects on invasiveness and fractal structures.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of chemotherapeutic impacts on tumor patterns within a nutrient-limited growth model, highlighting morphological transitions and scaling property changes.

Findings

Chemotherapy can eliminate, stabilize, or promote tumor growth depending on the schedule.

Mild cytotoxic treatments reduce growth rates but do not alter scaling properties.

Aggressive antimitotic treatments induce a transition to more fractal tumor morphologies.

Abstract

Recently, we have proposed a nutrient-limited model for the avascular growth of tumors including cell proliferation, motility and death \cite{jr}, that, qualitatively reproduces commonly observed morphologies for carcinomas {\it in situ}. In the present work, we analyze the effects of distinct chemotherapeutic strategies on the patterns, scaling and growth laws obtained for such nutrient-limited model. Two kinds of chemotherapeutic strategies were considered, namely, those that kill cancer cells and those that block cell mitosis but allows the cell to survive for some time. Depending on the chemotherapeutic schedule used, the tumors are completely eliminated, reach a stationary size or grow following power laws. The model suggests that the scaling properties of the tumors are not affected by the mild cytotoxic treatments, although a reduction in growth rates and an increase in invasiveness are observed. For the strategies based on antimitotic drugs a morphological transition in which compact tumors become more fractal under aggressive treatments was seen.