LAUSR

Abstract One of the main challenges in cancer therapy is the presence of high interstitial pressure within the tumor's center which creates significant resistance opposite chemotherapy. In the present study, Soret effect has been introduced in order to overcome the physicochemical and biological barriers involved in drug delivery into the targeted cells. Three main transport phenomena have been studied in the present research for the purpose of tumor modeling: (A) macroscopic fluid transfer, (B) macroscopic mass transfer and (C) bio-heat transfer. The continuity, momentum and bio-heat transfer equations have been solved steadily, while mass transfer equations have been solved unsteadily regarding diffusion and convection effects through the cellular and extracellular tissues. The pressure, velocity, and temperature distribution relations have been obtained by solving the relevant equations analytically, while the concentration distribution profiles have been obtained numerically. It was observed that the tumor temperature is greater than normal tissue temperature up to 3 °C. For this temperature gradient, Sr calculated by −0.04. According to Soret effect, the drug with molecular weight tends to moves to the cold region. So, different Soret numbers of −0.01, −0.04, −0.1, 0, 0.01, and 0.1 was evaluated to determine the optimum temperature of the tumor. It was shown that increasing Soret number from −0.04 to +0.1 after 1 h (decreasing the tumor temperature near to the normal tissue temperature), improves the drug delivery by 83%.