Biophysical and Biochemical mechanisms underlying Collective Cell Migration in Cancer Metastasis

TL;DR

This paper reviews the complex biophysical and biochemical mechanisms of collective cell migration, emphasizing mathematical and computational models that elucidate their roles in cancer metastasis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of factors influencing collective migration and discusses various modeling approaches with applications to cancer research.

Findings

Different models reveal distinct aspects of multicellular migration.

Biophysical and biochemical factors are crucial in driving collective movement.

Modeling frameworks aid in understanding cancer metastasis mechanisms.

Abstract

Multicellular collective migration is a ubiquitous strategy of cells to translocate spatially in diverse tissue environments to accomplish a wide variety of biological phenomena, viz. embryonic development, wound healing, and tumor progression. Diverse cellular functions and behaviors, for instance, cell protrusions, active contractions, cell-cell adhesion, biochemical signaling, remodeling of tissue micro-environment, etc., play their own role concomitantly to have a single concerted consequence of multicellular migration. Thus unveiling the driving principles, both biochemical and biophysical, of the inherently complex process of collective cell migration is an insurmountable task. Mathematical and computational models, in tandem with experimental data, help in shedding some light on it. Here we review different factors influencing Collective Cell Migration and then focus on different mathematical and computational models - discrete, hybrid, and continuum - which helps in revealing different aspects of multicellular migration. Finally, we discuss the applications of these modeling frameworks specific to cancer