Chaotic Dynamics of Tumor Growth and Regeneration

Tumor growth exhibits a wide variety of dynamical time behaviour. Current growth models such as the continuous-variable logistic, Gompertz or Gomp-ex models however exhibit only smooth monotonic approach to an asymptotic limit point and none of the other time-dependence. This paper argues that the richness of this dynamical behaviour could be understood within the framework of chaos, i.e. the study of the bifurcation structure of nonlinear equations. We illustrate using the simplest example of discrete logistic map and relate the system parameters to cellular stimulants/inhibitors such as growth factors, cytokines and angiogenic stimulating factors.