Classifying the Expansion Kinetics and Critical Surface Dynamics of Growing Cell Populations

We systematically study the growth kinetics and the critical surface dynamics of cell monolayers by a class of computationally efficient cellular automaton models avoiding lattice artifacts. Our numerically derived front velocity relationship indicates the limitations of the Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovskii-Piskounov equation for tumor growth simulations. The critical surface dynamics corresponds to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class, which disagrees with the interpretation by Bru et al. of their experimental observations as generic molecular-beam-epitaxy-like growth, questioning their conjecture that a successful therapy should lead away from molecular beam epitaxy.