Blood Flow and Tumour-Induced Angiogenesis: Dynamically Adapting Vascular Networks

Abstract

Over the past decade or so, there has been a large number of modeling approaches aimed at elucidating the most important mechanisms affecting the formation of new capillaries from parent blood vessels (angiogenesis). Most studies have focussed upon the way in which capillary sprouts are initiated and migrate in response to diffusible chemical stimuli supplied by hypoxic stromal cells and leukocytes in the contexts of solid tumour growth and wound healing. However, relatively few studies have examined the important role played by blood perfusion during angiogenesis and fewer still have explored the ways in which a dynamically evolving bed architecture can affect the distribution of flow within it. From the perspective of solid tumour growth and, perhaps more importantly, its subsequent treatment, it would clearly be of some benefit to understand this coupling between vascular structure and perfusion more fully. This chapter describes a hybrid model of vascular network formation coupled with flow and then focuses on the implications of such a coupling upon chemotherapeutic, anti-angiogenic, and anti-vascular treatments.