Lejeune Emma, Linder Christian
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
Biomech Model Mechanobiol. 2017 Aug;16(4):1141-1157. doi: 10.1007/s10237-017-0876-8. Epub 2017 Jan 26.
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.
肿瘤的计算模型有潜力将细胞尺度和组织尺度上的观察结果联系起来。在细胞尺度模型中，每个细胞可被视为一个离散实体，而组织尺度模型通常将肿瘤表示为一个连续体。尽管离散方法通常能对细胞行为进行更具机械性和生物学驱动的描述，但在组织尺度上其计算往往难以处理。在此，我们将近场动力学（一种旨在统一离散介质和连续介质力学的理论和计算方法）应用于生物材料的生长。结果得到了一个肿瘤生长的计算模型，该模型既可以表示单个细胞，也可以表示整个组织。我们利用近场动力学框架提供的灵活性来实现一种细胞分裂机制，其依据是细胞分裂是驱动肿瘤生长的机制。本文提供了一个实施新的肿瘤生长建模技术的通用框架。
