dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaGrowth Laws in Cancer: Implications for Radiotherapy
| Authors | P. Castorina, T. S. Deisboeck, P. Gabriele, C. Guiot |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0608278 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608278 |
Abstract
Comparing both, the more conventional Gompertz tumor growth law (GL) and the ``Universal'' law (UL), recently proposed and applied to cancer,we have investigated the growth law's implications on various radiotherapy regimen. According to GL, the surviving tumor cell fraction could be reduced 'ad libidum', independently of the initial tumor mass,simply by increasing the number of treatments. On the contrary, if tumor growth dynamics would indeed follow the Universal scaling law, there is a lower limit of the survival fraction that cannot be reduced any further regardless of the total number of treatments. This finding can explain the so called ``tumor size effect'' and re-emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis as it implies that radiotherapy may be successful provided the tumor mass at treatment onset is rather small. Taken together with our previous works, implications of these findings include revisiting standard radiotherapy regimen and overall treatment protocols.
{
"annotation_id": "ea3e4706-d489-4d8a-b229-b048c20c9afd",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:10.526000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:10.526000Z",
"file_hash": "3f265fe9fc07dac9a59b82b66517d58841b5a18e708eb13c7236abeb4eea4918",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Comparing both, the more conventional Gompertz tumor growth law (GL) and the\n``Universal\u0027\u0027 law (UL), recently proposed and applied to cancer,we have\ninvestigated the growth law\u0027s implications on various radiotherapy regimen.\n According to GL, the surviving tumor cell fraction could be reduced \u0027ad\nlibidum\u0027, independently of the initial tumor mass,simply by increasing the\nnumber of treatments. On the contrary, if tumor growth dynamics would indeed\nfollow the Universal scaling law, there is a lower limit of the survival\nfraction that cannot be reduced any further regardless of the total number of\ntreatments.\n This finding can explain the so called ``tumor size effect\u0027\u0027 and\nre-emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis as it implies that radiotherapy\nmay be successful provided the tumor mass at treatment onset is rather small.\n Taken together with our previous works, implications of these findings\ninclude revisiting standard radiotherapy regimen and overall treatment\nprotocols.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0608278",
"authors": [
"P. Castorina",
"T. S. Deisboeck",
"P. Gabriele",
"C. Guiot"
],
"categories": [
"physics.med-ph"
],
"title": "Growth Laws in Cancer: Implications for Radiotherapy",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608278"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "a0638f7a-2b42-41f1-b78a-500adf9f861d",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}