Blood flow oscillations are triggered by irregular vascular networks: a microscale mechanism for cycling hypoxia in tumours?

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• Yaron Benami, University of Oxford
• Monday 05 December 2022, 14:00-15:00
• Biosciences E-102 and zoom (please contact the organiser for link).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Pradeep Keshavanarayana.

It has long been hypothesised that the abnormal structure of tumour vasculature leads to spatio-temporal variations in blood flow, and that these manifest at the macroscopic level as cycling hypoxia. This phenomenon is characterized by periodic episodes of oxygen deprivation, followed by periods of reoxygenation in some tumour regions. In spite of its known impact on tumour aggressiveness and response to therapy, the mechanisms and structural abnormalities that contribute to oscillatory tumour blood flow remain unclear. When blood flows in small vessels its viscosity is governed by the concentration of red blood cells, such that the hydraulic resistance depends nonlinearly on the haematocrit level. On the other hand, the haematocrit at vessel branch points splits nonlinearly between the daughter vessels, a phenomenon known as “plasma skimming”. Together, these two effects result in coupled nonlinear relations between haematocrit concentrations and flow rates in the different vessels of the network. By analysing mathematical models of microscale blood flow in simple networks, I will show in my talk how the intrinsic nonlinearities of the flow, together with microstructural features of vascular networks, affect the blood flow dynamics. Using combination of numerical simulation and stability analysis, I will demonstrate the basic microscale mechanisms that promote the emergence self-sustained oscillatory dynamics. I will discuss how these microscale oscillations may lead to the observed macroscopic cycling hypoxia in tumours

This talk is part of the Applied Mathematics Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Biosciences E-102 and zoom (please contact the organiser for link)
• Applied Mathematics Seminar Series
• School of Mathematics Events

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