Physics of cancer: Building multi-scale mathematical models to decode mechanisms of cancer cell invasion
Faculty: Mohit Kumar Jolly (BSSE) Ramray Bhat (MRDG)
Description:
Cancer progression and metastasis involves various reciprocal interactions among malignant epithelial cells, and extracellular matrix at biochemical and/or biomechanical levels. The invasion patterns shown by cancer cells can come in different morphologies – solitary mesenchymal cells, multicellular collectives, and a combination of the two. How such emergent dynamics emerge from the interconnections among cancer cells and their surroundings – through factors such as cell-cel adhesion, cell-matrix adhesion, reaction-diffusion based signaling dynamics etc. – remains unclear.
This project involves developing 3D multi-scale mathematical models to understand the physical principles that cancer cells follow while migrating solitarily or collectively, or switching/shuttling between these migration modes. A Cellular Potts-based modeling environment will be used to integrate various input parameters and characterize their effect on cancer cell migration such as leader-follower cell dynamics, glass-like behavior, or jamming/unjamming transitions.
References:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.8b01428