Palisades in Glioblastoma

This project extends an established mathematical framework modeling glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) growth by incorporating the effects of cell adhesion. Building on Ayensa-Jiménez et al.’s “go-or-grow” model, which simulates tumor cell proliferation and migration driven by oxygen gradients, we hypothesized that cell adhesion significantly influences the formation and maintenance of GBM structures such as necrotic cores and pseudopalisades. We validated this by formulating an adhesion-dependent flux term and integrating it into the original model. Our improved model more accurately reproduces in vitro observations of GBM cell behavior in microfluidic environments and highlights the growing impact of adhesion over time, particularly in double pseudopalisade regions. These results emphasize the importance of accounting for physical cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions in modeling tumor progression and may support future therapeutic modeling efforts.