title: Modeling tumor growth with peridynamics.
abstract: Computational models of tumors have the potential to connect observations made on the cellular and the tissue scales. With cellular scale models, each cell can be treated as a discrete entity, while tissue scale models typically represent tumors as a continuum. Though the discrete approach often enables a more mechanistic and biologically driven description of cellular behavior, it is often computationally intractable on the tissue scale. Here, we adapt peridynamics, a theoretical and computational approach designed to unify the mechanics of discrete and continuous media, for the growth of biological materials. The result is a computational model for tumor growth that can represent either individual cells or the tissue as a whole. We take advantage of the flexibility provided by the peridynamic framework to implement a cell division mechanism, motivated by the fact that cell division is the mechanism driving tumor growth. This paper provides a general framework for implementing a new tumor growth modeling technique.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lejeune
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. linder@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5731-5631
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Linder
mesh_terms: D002455:Cell Division; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms
keywords: Cell division; Morphogenesis; Peridynamics; Tumor growth