Early stages of collective cell invasion: Biomechanics

The early stages of the collective invasion may occur by single mesenchymal cells or hybrid epithelial-mesenchymal cell groups that detach from cancerous tissue. Tumors may also emit invading protrusions of epithelial cells, which could be led (or not) by a basal cell. Here we devise a fractional step cellular Potts model comprising passive and active cells able to describe these different types of collective invasion before cells start proliferating. Durotaxis and active forces have different symmetry properties and are included in different half steps of the fractional step method. Compared with a single step method, fractional step produces more realistic cellular invasion scenarios with little extra computational effort. Biochemical mechanisms that determine how cells acquire their different phenotypes and cellular proliferation will be incorporated to the model in future publications.

Source: arXiv:2602.11813v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11813v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.11813v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11813v1