Ontogenetic growth of multicellular tumor spheroids

Abstract

In ontogenetic growth models, the basal metabolic rate is usually assumed to depend on the individual mass following a power law. Here it is shown that, in the case of multicellular tumor spheroids, the emergence of a necrotic core invalidates this assumption. The implications of this result for spheroid growth are discussed, and a procedure to determine the growth parameters using macroscopic measurements is proposed.