Numerical simulation of tumor spheroid dynamics

While mosts cells are polarized and give rise to complex structures as they grow, some cells, like those found in several tumors, are unpolarized, and produce spherical, or almost-spherical structures. Tumor spheroids may be grown in vitro and yield useful information on tumor dynamics, but growth requires long times (months) and is not easily controlled. We are now developing a novel numerical engine to simulate the growth of unpolarized cells and to study spheroid tumor growth in silico. Here we sketch the structure of the simulator and report on some of the very first results obtained with this approach.