长期热环境中肿瘤生长与熵的关系研究

Investigation on Tumor Growth in Relation to Entropy Under Long-term Hyperthermia Environment

肿瘤是人类健康的危害之一。经过一个多世纪的研究,依旧没有有效的手段完全治愈肿瘤。热疗作为肿瘤治疗的一种手段,对肿瘤生长的抑制和治疗具有一定的效果,但热疗如何杀伤肿瘤组织的机制尚不明了。为了理解热对肿瘤细胞或组织的影响,本文采用宏观热力学物理量熵描述肿瘤这一特殊的热力学系统。生命系统将自身产生的正熵排出,并从外界吸收负熵以维持其结构或生命活动的有序。结合长期热环境下肿瘤生长的实验数据,对该过程中肿瘤系统内可能的熵变进行了半定量和定性分析。在长期局部温度改变的条件下,肿瘤系统内的熵变来源包括:①外界热量的输入;②细胞代谢;③化学势引起的扩散流;④肿瘤内液体流动的黏滞力做功等4个方面。结果发现,长期的热环境会使得肿瘤组织内的熵从多个来源增加而最终导致肿瘤生长的抑制和肿瘤体积的减小。该分析方法对于进一步研究肿瘤生长与环境的相互关系和治疗治疗方法的优化有着重要意义。

The abruption and modality rate of cancer is growing every year in the world. And the therapeutic means are far from a thorough heal of the disease： Both the causes of the disease and the mechanisms underlying its metastasis are still under investigation. Hyperthermic treatment can cause complete and selective destruction of malignant cells. To understand how heat affects tumor, entropy is used to characterize the structure or the assemble degree of a living system in thermal dynamics. The flow of entropy between tumor and normal cells from the reference point of entropy is calculated. Entropy flows resulting from external energy （heat）, diffusion current, chemical reaction rate and velocity gradient coupled with viscous stress, are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that the long-term hyperthermia environment can increase the positive entropy of the system and finally inhabit the growth of tumor. The analysis provides a new method for study of the relationship between the tumor growth and the environment, and a possible alternative cancer treatment.