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A Multicellular Mechanochemical Model to Investigate Tumor Microenvironment Remodeling and Pre-Metastatic Niche
Shreyas U Hirway1, Kylie G Nairon1, Aleksander Skardal1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH USA.
Introduction:
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a major cause of cancer related deaths in the United States, with CRC metastasis to the liver being a common occurrence. The development of an optimal metastatic environment is essential process prior to tumor metastasis. This process, called pre-metastatic niche (PMN) formation, involves activation of key resident liver cells, including fibroblast-like stellate cells and macrophages such as Kupffer cells. Tumor-mediated factors introduced to this environment transform resident cells that secrete additional growth factors and remodel the extracellular matrix (ECM), which is thought to promote tumor colonization and metastasis in the secondary environment.
Methods:
To investigate the underlying mechanisms of these dynamics, we developed a multicellular computational model to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of the PMN formation in tissue. This modeling framework integrates intracellular and extracellular signaling, and traction and junctional forces into a Cellular Potts model, and represents multiple cell types with varying levels of cellular activation. We perform numerical experiments to investigate the role of key factors in PMN formation and tumor invasiveness, including growth factor concentration, timing of tumor arrival, relative composition of resident cells, and the size of invading tumor cluster.
Results:
These parameter studies identified growth factor availability and ECM concentration in the environment as two of the key determinants of tumor invasiveness. We further predict that both the ECM concentration potential and growth factor sensitivity of the stellate cells are key drivers of the PMN formation and associated ECM concentration.
Conclusions:
Overall, this modeling framework represents a significant step towards simulating cancer metastasis and investigating the role of key factors on PMN formation.
Supplementary Information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12195-024-00831-0.
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