A unified model of sigmoid tumour growth based on cell proliferation and quiescence

ABSTRACT

Abstract.   Objectives: A class of sigmoid functions designated generalized von Bertalanffy, Gompertzian and generalized Logistic has been used to fit tumour growth data. Various models have been proposed to explain the biological significance and foundations of these functions. However, no model has been found to fully explain all three or the relationships between them. Materials and Methods: We propose a simple cancer cell population dynamics model that provides a biological interpretation for these sigmoids' ability to represent tumour growth. Results and Conclusions: We show that the three sigmoids can be derived from the model and are in fact a single solution subject to the continuous variation of parameters describing the decay of the proliferation fraction and/or cell quiescence. We use the model to generate proliferation fraction profiles for each sigmoid and comment on the significance of the differences relative to cell cycle-specific and non-cell cycle-specific therapies.