title: Migration of breast cancer cells: understanding the roles of volume exclusion and cell-to-cell adhesion.
abstract: We study MCF-7 breast cancer cell movement in a transwell apparatus. Various experimental conditions lead to a variety of monotone and nonmonotone responses which are difficult to interpret. We anticipate that the experimental results could be caused by cell-to-cell adhesion or volume exclusion. Without any modeling, it is impossible to understand the relative roles played by these two mechanisms. A lattice-based exclusion process random-walk model incorporating agent-to-agent adhesion is applied to the experimental system. Our combined experimental and modeling approach shows that a low value of cell-to-cell adhesion strength provides the best explanation of the experimental data suggesting that volume exclusion plays a more important role than cell-to-cell adhesion. This combined experimental and modeling study gives insight into the cell-level details and design of transwell assays.
authors.affiliation: Mathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Towne
authors.forename: D L Sean
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: McElwain
authors.forename: Zee
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Upton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D002448:Cell Adhesion; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D002465:Cell Movement; D048429:Cell Size; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D013269:Stochastic Processes