Bridging the Gap between Mesoscopic and Macroscopic Models: The Case of Multicellular Tumor Spheroids

Multicellular tumor spheroids are valuable experimental tools in cancer research. By introducing an intermediate model, we have been able to successfully relate mesoscopic and macroscopic descriptions of spheroid growth. Since these descriptions stem from completely different roots (cell dynamics, and energy conservation and scaling arguments, respectively), their consistency validates both approaches and allows us to establish a direct correspondence between parameters characterizing processes occurring at different scales. Our approach may find applications as an example of bridging the gap between models at different scale levels in other contexts.

Figure 1

Temporal evolution for the volume of a single MTS (semilog scale). The star points refer to an MTS made of EMT6/Ro mouse mammary carcinoma cells grown in a culture medium (experimental data taken from Refs. 18, 19). The triangular points refer to a mesoscopic simulation for the growth of a single MTS [15, 16]. Volumes are expressed in ${\mathrm{cm}}^3$.