Recent Research

Physical modeling explains whether circulating tumor cell cluster break-up, become stuck, or pass through a micro-capillary.

Post Date:2016-09-02

Cancer metastasis is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. The process is driven by circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that traverse through blood vessel walls (known as extravasation) and are disseminated far from the original tumor through blood flow. Yeng-Long Chen (YLC) from the Institute of Physics worked in a collaborative study with the Toner Group at Harvard Medical School to discover a mechanism for CTC clusters to traverse small capillaries in the blood vessel wall.

YLC’s group developed a computation model to successfully capture the success or failure of CTC cluster transit through a small capillary. It is found that inter-cellular adhesion forces control whether the cluster break-up, becomes stuck, or pass through the capillary single-file. This suggests future strategies to change inter-cellular adhesion to reduce the probability of metastases.
“Clusters of circulating tumor cells traverse
capillary-sized vessels”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 113, 4947.

https://www.phys.sinica.edu.tw/files/bpic20161103112419am_CTCpic (1).jpg

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