| Contents |
| Invasion of tumor cells is an important step for metastasis and is governed by several subcellular processes. A number of them affect the contractivity, by which we describe the ability of the cancer cells to adapt their shape and orientation according to the surrounding tissue. We derive a multiscale model focusing on the influence of the cell contractivity on tumor cell migration. It takes into account both the subcellular level, where changes of contractivity are initiated, and the macroscopic level of the cell population. We provide the local existence of a unique solution in a general framework, prove the global existence of solutions for a slightly more specific setting and present numerical simulations to illustrate the effect of contractivity on the migration of cancer cells in our model. |
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