Similar self-organizing scale-invariant properties characterize early cancer invasion and long range species spread

TL;DR

This paper reveals that early cancer invasion shares scale-invariant properties with species spread, characterized by fractal boundaries and power-law patch sizes, driven by long-range dispersal mechanisms.

Contribution

It demonstrates a common spatio-temporal signature between cancer invasion and species dispersal, linking ecological processes to cancer spread.

Findings

Both processes exhibit fractal boundary geometries.

Patch size distributions follow a power-law scaling.

Long-distance dispersal underpins the observed patterns.

Abstract

Occupancy of new habitats through dispersion is a central process in nature. In particular, long range dispersal is involved in the spread of species and epidemics, although it has not been previously related with cancer invasion, a process that involves spread to new tissues. We show that the early spread of cancer cells is similar to the species individuals spread and that both processes are represented by a common spatio-temporal signature, characterized by a particular fractal geometry of the boundaries of patches generated, and a power law-scaled, disrupted patch size distribution. We show that both properties are a direct result of long-distance dispersal, and that they reflect homologous ecological processes of population self-organization. Our results are significant for processes involving long-range dispersal like biological invasions, epidemics and cancer metastasis.