Mechanical forces and nutrient supply as a model of tumor spheroids

Pablo Saez

Laboratori de Calcul Numeric UPC-BarcelonaTech

Wednesday 15th February 2017

11:30:00

Edificio 14 La Nave: AULA SEMINARI SALERI VI Piano, MOX Dipartimento di Matemcatica, POLITECNICO DI MILANO

Tumor growth is an intriguing but still poorly understood phenomenon. Despite its unquestionable genetic and epigenetic nature, mechanical forces and oxygen profiles have been found as a fundamental part of the tumor growth progression. Different experimental tools such as multicellular tumor spheroids has been used to study the effect of nutrients and mechanical forces in the evolution of tumors. On top of that, mathematical models are a reliable approach to give new insights in the study of tumor progression. I will discuss some mathematical models, based on the diffusion and mechanics involved in the growth of tumor spheroids, that reproduce the experimental evolution reported in literature. Besides, such models can be easily included in a finite element framework so that non-homogeneous deformation states can be imposed. I will also comment on the idea of contact inhibition that has been shown to be implicated in tumor growth. Altogether, the aim of all these models is to reproduce previous experimental data on tumor spheroids and to get new insights of this fascinating problem. contact: pasquale.ciarletta@polimi.it This seminar is organized within the Research project MFAG 17412 «Mathematical insights of glioblastoma growth: a mechano-biology approach for patientspecific clinical tools» funded by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC), Project coordinator Prof. Pasquale Ciarletta