Computational Analysis of the Effect of Vascular Normalization on IgG Delivery into the Solid Tumor

The present study investigates the transport of a macromolecule (IgG) into a non-homogeneous solid tumor with different parts of the necrotic, semi-necrotic, and well-vascularized regions under the influence of the normalization induced by anti-angiogenic therapy by numerically solving the continuity, Darcy, and convection-diffusion equations. Interstitial fluid pressure, interstitial fluid velocity, the area under the curve of the average IgG concentration distribution, and the area under the curve of the deviation from the average IgG concentration distribution are studied in various tumor sizes in the range of before and after the vascular normalization in this research. Results show the dependence of both interstitial fluid flow and solute transport analyses on the size of the tumor. Normalization causes a decrease in interstitial fluid pressure, which this pressure drop increases by decreasing the tumor size. Moreover, the interstitial fluid velocity behavior is improved by normalization. It is found that the efficiency of normalization in improving the therapeutic agent delivery is controlled by the tumor size from the point of view of average drug exposure and its uniformity. So that the uniformity of IgG distribution increases by 22% after the vascular normalization in .