Increasing Volumes of Breast Tumors Over Time

by Jakera Jean-Joseph

Submitted : Spring 2009

A cancer cell is a cell that grows out of control by ignoring signals that demand it to stop dividing. The following project expresses the time it takes for mammalian cells, or breast cancer cells to replicate and grow out of control under certain parameters. The time it takes for cells to replicate depends on a numerous amount of factors including mutations that cause cells to replicate at a rate faster or slower than the normal cell replication rate, mutations that cause cells to die faster or slower than the rate of their normal dying rate, cells that have the ability to carry out apoptosis, cells that have the ability to carry out angiogenesis, or the process of the growth of new blood vessel to carry sufficient blood to the cells in a tumor, and more. This project presents an approach to describe the time it takes for increasing volumes of a tumor to grow when only one condition is out of the normal, which is that there is solely a mutation in the birth cell rate of cancerous mammalian cells. All other parameters such as death cell rates, apoptosis and angiogenesis are under normal conditions. The volume of each tumor is found by calculating the amount of cells the diameter of a cube and then cubing the diameter to find its volume. The prediction of this project is that cancerous cells growth exponentially over time.

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