A mathematical model of tumor growth. III. comparison with experiment

In this paper a model of nonuniform inhibitor production is used to discuss some experimental results obtained by Folkman and Hochberg for multicellular spheroids (of V-79 Chinese hamster lung tissue). Built into the mathematical model is a parameter b which is a measure of the degree of nonuniformity of the inhibitor production rate. The “inverse problem” is solved by finding the value of b necessary to account for results with which the uniform model is incompatible [6]. The resulting value of b enables a good estimate to be made for the observed width of peripheral mitotic zones in the V-79 spheroids, and the resulting stability parameters lie in appropriate ranges for the model to be a significant improvement over uniform models. Further improvements are discussed, including a heuristic model for estimating the destabilizing effect of vascularization on tissue growth.