Existence of a stationary solution for the modified Ward-King tumor growth model (Q859624)

The paper is devoted to the study of a tumor growth model, which assumes that the tumor is ball-shaped and all known and unknown functions are radially symmetric in space variables. The mathematical formulation of the problem is the following two-point free boundary problem. If \(r\) denotes the space radial variable and \(R=R(r)\) is the unknown radius of the tumor, find \( \left( c(r),l(r),v(r),R\right) \) such that \[ c^{\prime \prime }(r)+\frac{2}{r}c^{\prime }(r)=f(c(r))l(r)\qquad 0<r<R, \] \[ c^{\prime }(0)=0,\;\qquad c(R)=1, \] \[ v(r)l^{\prime }(r)=\left( K_{M}(c(r))-K_{D}(c(r))\right) l(r)-K_{M}(c(r))l^{2}(r), \] \[ v^{\prime }(r)+\frac{2}{r}v(r)=K_{M}(c(r))l(r)-\mu ,\quad v(0)=0=v(R), \] where \(K_{M}\left( c\right) =K_{B}(c)+\mu ,\) \(K_{B}(c)\) \(\left( K_{D}(c)\right) \) is the birth rate of tumor cells (the death rate of tumor cells) when the nutrient concentration is at level \(c\). Note that \(c(r)\geq 0\) and \(0\leq l(r)\leq 1\) for \(0\leq r\leq R.\) To prove the existence of a solution, the author relies on the Schauder fixed point theorem.