Physics Of Secondary Tumor Formation: Effects Of Cell-Cell Adhesion
Evgeniy Khain, Postdoctoral Fellow, Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Formation of dense secondary tumor from a low density suspension of randomly located mobile cells is investigated using a discrete 2-D stochastic lattice model. Tumor growth is associated with the formation and growth of cell clusters. First, small-size clusters that contain several cells are formed from the homogenous state as a result of non-zero cell-cell adhesion. Then these clusters start growing; for subcritical adhesion parameter, the growth is entirely determined by proliferation (the first scenario) and for supercritical adhesion parameter, there is also a phase separation between high density clusters of cells and low density "gas" of cells (the second scenario). In the case of a sufficiently small proliferation rate, the dynamics in the second scenario can be dictated by the coarsening process, where larger clusters (tumors) grow at the expense of smaller ones.