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Survival of living tumor cells underlies many influences such as nutrient saturation, oxygen level, drug concentrations or mechanical forces. Data-supported mathematical modeling can be a powerful tool to get a better understanding of cell…
Cancer poses danger because of its unregulated growth, development of resistant subclones, and metastatic spread to vital organs. Although the major transitions in cancer development are increasingly well understood, we lack quantitative…
Understanding the role of microenvironment in cancer growth and metastasis is a key issue for cancer research. Here, we study the effect of osmotic pressure on the functional properties of primary and metastatic melanoma cell lines. In…
We describe a viscocapillary instability that can perturb the spherical symmetry of cellular aggregates in culture, also called multicellular spheroids. In the condition where the cells constituting the spheroid get their necessary…
Angiogenesis, the development of new vasculature, is a critical process in the growth of new tumors. Driven by a goal to understand this aspect of cancer proliferation, I develop a discrete computationally optimized mathematical model of…
Cells are dynamic systems characterized by temporal variations in biophysical properties such as stiffness and contractility. Recent studies show that the recruitment and release of actin filaments into and out of the cell cortex - a…
Clinically, palpation is one of the important diagnostic methods to assess tumor malignancy. In laboratory research, it is well accepted that the bulk stiffness of the tumor and the surrounding tissue is closely correlated with the…
Tissue surface tension influences cell sorting and tissue fusion. Earlier mechanical studies suggest that multicellular spheroids actively reinforce their surface tension with applied force. Here we study this open question through…
Cancer research has shifted from a purely gene-centric view to a more holistic understanding that recognizes the critical role of the tumour microenvironment, where mechanics and metabolism are key drivers of disease progression. However,…
The interactions between tumor cells and the immune system play a crucial role in cancer evolution. In this study, we explore how these interactions influence cancer progression by modeling the relationships among naive T cells, effector T…
We argue that volumetric growth dynamics of a solid cancer depend on the tumor system's overall surface extension. While this at first may seem evident, to our knowledge, so far no theoretical argument has been presented explaining this…
Tumor invasion, the process by which tumor cells break away from their primary tumor and gain access to vascular systems, is an important step in cancer metastasis. Most current 3D tumor invasion assays consisted of single tumor cells…
We study the dynamics of proliferating cell collectives whose microscopic constituents' growth is inhibited by macroscopic growth-induced stress. Discrete particle simulations of a growing collective show the emergence of concentric-ring…
Tumor growth, which plays a central role in cancer evolution, depends on both the internal features of the cells, such as their ability for unlimited duplication, and the external conditions, e.g., supply of nutrients, as well as the…
We have developed a novel scanning probe-based methodology to study cell biomechanics. The time dependence of the force exerted by the cell surface on a scanning probe at constant local deformation has been used to extract local…
Mechanics and biochemical signaling are both often deregulated in cancer, leading to cancer cell phenotypes that exhibit increased invasiveness, proliferation, and survival. The dynamics and interactions of cytoskeletal components control…
Clinical management of cancer has continuously evolved for several decades. Biochemical, molecular and genomics approaches have brought and still bring numerous insights into cancerous diseases. It is now accepted that some phenomena,…
Theoretical and computational tools that can be used in the clinic to predict neoplastic progression and propose individualized optimal treatment strategies to control cancer growth is desired. To develop such a predictive model, one must…
In this thesis we develop minimal models of the relationship between motility, growth, and evolution of cancer cells. We utilise simple simulations of a population of individual cells in space to examine how changes in mechanical properties…
We use a theoretical approach to examine the effect of a radial fluid flow or electric current on the growth and homeostasis of a cell spheroid. Such conditions may be generated by a drain of micrometric diameter. To perform this analysis,…