title: Mechano-transduction in tumour growth modelling.
abstract: The evolution of biological systems is strongly influenced by physical factors, such as applied forces, geometry or the stiffness of the micro-environment. Mechanical changes are particularly important in solid tumour development, as altered stromal-epithelial interactions can provoke a persistent increase in cytoskeletal tension, driving the gene expression of a malignant phenotype. In this work, we propose a novel multi-scale treatment of mechano-transduction in cancer growth. The avascular tumour is modelled as an expanding elastic spheroid, whilst growth may occur both as a volume increase and as a mass production within a cell rim. Considering the physical constraints of an outer healthy tissue, we derive the thermo-dynamical requirements for coupling growth rate, solid stress and diffusing biomolecules inside a heterogeneous tumour. The theoretical predictions successfully reproduce the stress-dependent growth curves observed by in vitro experiments on multicellular spheroids.
authors.affiliation: Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert, UMR CNRS 7190, Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6, 4 place Jussieu, Case 162, 75005 Paris, France. pasquale.ciarletta@upmc.fr
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ciarletta
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ambrosi
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Maugin
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Preziosi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D006801:Humans; D040542:Mechanotransduction, Cellular; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D013816:Thermodynamics