Accelerated tumor invasion under non-isotropic cell dispersal in glioblastomas

Fort, Joaquim; Solé Vicente, Ricard, 1962-

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/15/5/055001

Accelerated tumor invasion under non-isotropic cell dispersal in glioblastomas

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Fort J, Solé Vicente R. Accelerated tumor invasion under non-isotropic cell dispersal in glioblastomas. New Journal of Physics. 2013;15:055001. DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/15/5/055001

Abstract

Glioblastomas are highly diffuse, malignant tumors that have so far evaded clinical treatment. The strongly invasive behavior of cells in these tumors makes them very resistant to treatment, and for this reason both experimental and theoretical efforts have been directed toward understanding the spatiotemporal pattern of tumor spreading. Although usual models assume a standard diffusion behavior, recent experiments with cell cultures indicate that cells tend to move in directions close to that of glioblastoma invasion, thus indicating that a biased random walk model may be much more appropriate. Here we show analytically that, for realistic parameter values, the speeds predicted by biased dispersal are consistent with experimentally measured data. We also find that models beyond reaction–diffusion–advection equations are necessary to capture this substantial effect of biased dispersal on glioblastoma spread.