A parabolic-hyperbolic system modeling the growth of a tumor

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a model with tumor microenvironment involving nutrient density, extracellular matrix and matrix-degrading enzymes, which satisfy a coupled system of PDEs with a free boundary. For this coupled parabolic-hyperbolic free boundary problem, we prove that there is a unique radially symmetric solution globally in time. The stationary problem involves an ODE system which is transformed into a singular integro-differential equation. We establish a well-posed theorem for such general types of equations by the shooting method; the theorem is then applied to our problem for the existence of a stationary solution. In addition, for this highly nonlinear problem, we also prove the uniqueness of the stationary solution, which is a nontrivial result. In addition, numerical simulations indicate that the stationary solution is likely locally asymptotically stable for reasonable range of parameters.