Microvascular Buckling Due to Tissue Growth Seminar

Blood vessel abnormalities can impair blood flow into tumours, which decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic treatments aimed at killing them. Tumour blood vessels can have many types of abnormality, including chaotic direction and entanglement, a high level of branching, overly porous capillary walls and chaotic blood flow. One particular type of abnormality is vascular buckling and collapse. The aim of this talk is to present a mathematical model of this phenomenon. There are two broad types of vascular buckling we consider: planar buckling and axial buckling. Planar buckling occurs when most of the non-cylindrical deformation is in a plane perpendicular to the vessel’s axis. Axial buckling involves a significant non- cylindrical deformation in a direction parallel to the axis of the vessel. Of course these two categories are not entirely distinct: some buckles may possess significant planar and axial components.

By providing a mathematical model of these phenomena, we hope to understand better how blood reaches tumours, and so how we may devise better treatments to destroy them.