Tumor doubling time

Idealized course of tumor growth in a solid tumor.

Among tumor doubling time ( engl. Tumor volume doubling time (TVDT)) is defined as the time within which the volume of a particular tumor doubled.

It is assumed that tumor growth can be described by an exponential function (mathematical model of tumor kinetics):

${\displaystyle V(t)=V(0)2^{t/TVDT}}$

V is the volume and t is the elapsed time.

According to this model, a tumor requires approximately 30 TVDT to grow from a single transformed cell to a tumor approximately 1 cm in size. If the tumor grows spherically, then the volume doubles when the diameter increases by approx. 26%.

The faster a tumor grows, the shorter its doubling time TVDT.

For small cell lung cancer doubling times of approx. 50 to 100 days are given, for the non-small cell lung cancer doubling times of approx. 100 to 300 days.

In reality, however, many tumors often do not show exponential growth, that is, the doubling time does not remain constant, but changes over time.

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• E. Mehrara, E. Forssell-Aronsson, H. Ahlman, P. Bernhardt: Specific growth rate versus doubling time for quantitative characterization of tumor growth rate. In: Cancer Res. 67 (8), 2007 Apr 15, pp. 3970-3975. PMID 17440113
• SG Jennings, HT Winer-Muram, M. Tann, J. Ying, I. Dowdeswell: Distribution of stage I lung cancer growth rates determined with serial volumetric CT measurements. In: Radiology. 241 (2), 2006 Nov, pp. 554-563. Epub 2006 Sep 27. PMID 17005771
• MP Revel, A. Merlin, S. Peyrard, R. Triki, S. Couchon, G. Chatellier, G. Frija: Software volumetric evaluation of doubling times for differentiating benign versus malignant pulmonary nodules. In: Am J Roentgenol. 187 (1), 2006 Jul, pp. 135-142. PMID 16794167

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