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Quantitation of Autocrine Regulation of Tumor Growth: A General Phenomenological Model¹

eljko Bajzer and Stanimir Vuk-Pavlovi

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Division of Developmental Oncology Research, Mayo Foundation, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, and Rugier Bokovi Institute, Zagreb, Croatia, Yugoslavia

We present a model that considers autocrine regulation of tumor growth as a feedback control system. The model is general in that it can accommodate any growth curve which fits the data. We propose an algorithm for quantitation of the open loop gain parameter and we define the autocrine gain parameter; these parameters express the efficiency of the feedback mechanism. The model provides guidelines for design of experiments to measure the contribution of autocrine regulation to growth of biological systems, particularly tumors.

¹ Supported in part by Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Grant CA15083D2 from the National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services.

Received 2/ 6/87. Revised 7/17/87. Accepted 7/22/87.