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A mathematical model of tumor growth has been developed
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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A mathematical model that predicts how a tumour will grow could help design treatments tailored to individual cancer types.
Some tumors stop growing when they reach a certain size, while others continue to grow. They do this by exploiting the network of blood vessels that feed them, causing the tumor to become increasingly widespread. The tumor can also grow cancer cells in other parts of the body, a process called metastasis. Finding a way to predict which tumors will remain dormant and which will spread is a major goal of cancer research, and one that increasingly involves physicists and mathematicians.
Among them is physicist Sihui Tsoi of Heidelberg University in Germany, who, together with colleagues, developed a mathematical model of how the tumor will develop. The scientists analyzed detailed images of tumors taken from cancer-infected mice and the blood vessels that feed them at different stages of development. The results were converted into equations describing the complex interactions between healthy cells, cancer cells, and surrounding blood vessels.
The resulting model, which predicts “probabilistic tumor growth patterns,” says Tsoi, uses the distribution of blood vessels around a tumor. When applied to mice in the studies, the model predicted how the cancer would progress in every case. “It’s like a fast-forward button,” he says (Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/srep00031). The model should help determine which blood vessels will favor development, in order to limit tumor growth.
"In the future, threats will no longer be population-based. People will be treated individually based on the predictions of our model," says co-author Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida.
Klaus Jorgensen, of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, says such models will be very important in future cancer treatments, but adds that the model only simplifies some aspects of tumour growth.
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