Related papers: Enhanced extracellular matrix remodeling due to em…
Large-scale cellular transformations are triggered by subtle physical and structural changes in individual biomacromolecular and membrane components. A prototypical example of such an event is the orchestrated fusion of membranes within an…
It is widely recognized that reciprocal interactions between cells and their microenvironment, via mechanical forces and biochemical signaling pathways, regulate cell behaviors during normal development, homeostasis and disease progression…
Extracellular matrix (ECM) constitutes a key basement structure to human organisms by acting as a complex network of large proteins and carbohydrates that provide structural support to surrounding cells. Remodeling in the extracellular…
We study multicellular tumor spheroids by introducing a new three-dimensional agent-based Voronoi/Delaunay hybrid model. In this model, the cell shape varies from spherical in thin solution to convex polyhedral in dense tissues. The next…
Growth drives cellular dynamics in dense aggregates including bacterial colonies, developing tissues, and tumors. We investigate the underlying physical principles emerging from the interplay of growth, steric repulsion, and motility in a…
We present and analyze new multi-species phase-field mathematical models of tumor growth and ECM invasion. The local and nonlocal mathematical models describe the evolution of volume fractions of tumor cells, viable cells (proliferative and…
Breast cancer invasion into adipose tissue strongly influences disease progression and metastasis. The degree of cancer cell invasion into adipose tissue depends on numerous biochemical and physical properties of cancer cells, adipocytes,…
Epithelization, the process whereby an epithelium covers a cell-free surface, is not only central to wound healing but also pivotal in embryonic morphogenesis, regeneration, and cancer. In the context of wound healing, the epithelization…
How cells move through the three-dimensional extracellular matrix (ECM) is of increasing interest in attempts to understand important biological processes such as cancer metastasis. Just as in motion on flat surfaces, it is expected that…
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…
We have extended our previously developed 3D multi-scale agent-based brain tumor model to simulate cancer heterogeneity and to analyze its impact across the scales of interest. While our algorithm continues to employ an epidermal growth…
During tissue invasion individual tumor cells exhibit two interconvertible migration modes, namely mesenchymal and amoeboid migration. The cellular microenvironment triggers the switch between both modes, thereby allowing adaptation to…
Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…
Cancer cells can acquire a spectrum of stable hybrid epithelial/mesenchymal (E/M) states during epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Cells in these hybrid E/M phenotypes often combine epithelial and mesenchymal features and tend to…
Multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) are advanced cell culture systems for assessing the impact of combinatorial radio(chemo)therapy. They exhibit therapeutically relevant in-vivo-like characteristics from 3D cell-cell and cell-matrix…
We investigate the morphology of a toroidal fluid membrane vesicle confined inside a spherical container. The equilibrium shapes are assembled in a geometrical phase diagram as a function of scaled area and reduced volume of the membrane.…
Experimental evidence suggests that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mediated activation of the signaling protein phospholipase C gamma plays a critical role in a cancer cell's phenotypic decision to either proliferate or to migrate…
In this paper a macroscopic model of tumor cord growth is developed, relying on the mathematical theory of deformable porous media. Tumor is modeled as a saturated mixture of proliferating cells, extracellular fluid and extracellular…
Nonlinear stiffening is a ubiquitous property of major types of biopolymers that make up the extracellular matrices (ECM) including collagen, fibrin and basement membrane. Within the ECM, many types of cells such as fibroblasts and cancer…
Eukaryotic cells intrinsically change their shape, by changing the composition of their membrane and by restructuring their underlying cytoskeleton. We present here further studies and extensions of a minimal physical model, describing a…