Competition between epithelial tissue elasticity and surface tension in cancer morphogenesis

TL;DR

This paper develops a continuum mechanical model to study how the interplay between tissue elasticity and surface tension influences epithelial tissue morphology during early cancer development, predicting cell softness changes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model capturing the competition between tissue elasticity and surface tension, explaining morphological changes and cell softness in pretumoral epithelium.

Findings

A critical tension imbalance triggers tissue folding.

Pretumoral cells are predicted to be softer than healthy cells.

The model explains morphological transitions in early cancer stages.

Abstract

We derive a continuum mechanical model to capture the morphological changes occurring at the pretumoral stage of epithelial tissues. The proposed model aims to investigate the competition between the bulk elasticity of the epithelium and the surface tensions of the apical and basal sides. According to this model, when the apico-basal tension imbalance reaches a critical value, a subcritical bifurcation is triggered and the epithelium attains its physiological folded shape. Based on data available in the literature, our model predicts that pretumoral cells are softer than healthy cells.