An in-silico model for solid tumor growth based on the concept of glycolysis

Cancer growth is a complex process which depends on several tasks that cancer cells have to perform in order to live and proliferate. Among these tasks, perhaps the most significant one is to reach adequate sources of nutrients, such as oxygen and glucose, from their surrounding environment in order to initiate their respiration process and provide them with the necessary energy in the form of ATP molecules. Cellular respiration is a biological mechanism that consists of two sequential processes, named `glycolysis´ and `oxidative phosporylation´ (OXPHOS). Since 1956, when the biologist Otto Warburg discovered the increase of glycolysis in cancer cell compared to healthy cells, glycolysis has been studied in depth in order to understand its role in cancer genesis and growth. Towards this direction we propose a new in-silico cancer growth model which embeds the glycolytic potential of the cancer cells in the growth process. The experimental observations obtained show that the model fits the cancer data predicting the tumor´s growth, in the proliferative, hypoxic and necrotic zone, quite satisfactory.