A free-boundary model of vascularized tumor growth with time-periodic coefficients

Abstract

We investigate a free boundary PDE model for vascularized tumor growth with two time-periodic coefficients representing nutrient supply $\phi(t)$ and nutrient demand $\psi(t)$. Under radial symmetry, the model reduces to a nonautonomous ODE for the tumor radius. We prove a vanishing-persistence dichotomy governed by the averaged coefficients $\bar{\phi}$ and $\bar{\psi}$: if the average nutrient supply does not exceed the average nutrient demand, namely $\bar{\phi}\le \bar{\psi}$, the tumor radius tends to zero; if the average supply exceeds the average demand, namely $\bar{\phi}>\bar{\psi}$, the tumor persists and converges to a unique positive periodic solution. We also study the linear stability of this periodic solution when nonradial perturbations are imposed. Under a stronger condition on the nutrient supply and demand, we show that the radially symmetric periodic solution is linearly stable when the tumor aggressiveness parameter is sufficiently small. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the analytical results.