Special Session 41: 

Multiscale Modelling of Adhesion within the Cancer Invasion Process

Dumitru Trucu
University of Dundee
Scotland
Co-Author(s):    
Abstract:
Understanding the complex mechanisms of growth and spread of cancer in the human body remains one of the greatest scientific challenges. At the hearth of this challenge stays the natural multiscale character of cancer development which is conferred by the double-feedback link between the complex molecular signaling enabling local inter-cellular interactions (at cell-scale) and the collective dynamics of cell population (at tissue-scale). In conjunction with enzymatic activities, increased cancer cell motility due to changes in cell-adhesion properties (via dynamically formed adhesion junctions and cell-surface binding from ECM ligands) further exacerbates the invasion. The cell-scale activities are however in a dynamic cross-talk with critical tissue-scale processes reflected in the evolving morphology and migration patterns of the cancer cell population. In this talk we will present a novel multiscale moving boundary approach for cancer invasion that accounts for cell-adhesion in the context of the multiphase nature of the ECM dynamics. This connects the tissue-scale macro-dynamics with both the proteolytic cell-scale dynamics occurring at the tumour invasive edge and the micro-scale ECM fibres dynamic degradation and realignment occurring inside the tumour domain. The new modelling framework, will be accompanied by details of the computational approach and a discussion of the numerical simulation results.