Modelling metastasis of breast cancer cells

晚期乳腺癌会导致骨转移。在这个项目中，我们询问乳腺癌细胞为什么以及如何迁移到骨骼以及它们如何与骨骼微环境进行机械相互作用。细胞迁移受到细胞所处环境的几何和力学特性的影响。当这个项目开始时，我们已经在PI的小组中编写了一些现有的代码，用于使用有限差分和浸入边界方法模拟迁移细胞的活动液滴模型。这个项目的主要目的是扩展这个现有的代码，以包括骨微环境的模型。这将使我们能够研究环境对细胞迁移的影响。最初，学生在模拟中添加了壁来限制活动液滴的迁移。这些墙具有弹性和可变形性，可以采用任意几何形状。该项目的下一步将是为壁添加更复杂的机械性能（如粘弹性和非平衡活动），并将实验物理学（pi Jamie Hobbs和Ashley Cadby）和肿瘤学（pi Nicola Brown和Ingunn Holen）的合作者提供的骨骼几何和机械性能的模拟实验数据输入到模拟实验中。该奖学金一半由EPSRC资助，一半由谢菲尔德大学医学院资助，并与授予pi的CRUK补助金相关联。这是一个跨学科项目，符合EPSRC“生命物理学”的重大挑战，也符合其“软物质和生物物理学”的增长领域。该项目的理论建模旨在开发此类工作所需的计算工具，同时也加深我们对所涉及的复杂、复合、活性、聚合物和活材料科学的理解。从长远来看，我们希望这项工作将导致乳腺癌转移性骨癌治疗的治疗进展。

Advanced breast cancer leads to bone metastases. In this project we ask why and how breast cancer cells migrate to the bone and how they mechanically interact with the bone microenvironment. Cell migration is affected by the geometry and mechanical properties of the environment a cell is moving in. When this project started we already had some existing code written in the PI's group for simulating an active droplet model of a migrating cell using finite difference and immersed boundary methods. The main aim of this project is to extend this existing code to include models of the bone microenvironment. This will allow us to study the effects of the environment on the cell migration. Initially the student has added walls to the simulation to confine the migrating active droplet. These walls are made elastically deformable and can be initiated with arbitrary geometry. The next steps of the project will be to add more complex mechanical properties to the walls (such as viscoelasticity and out of equilibrium activity) and to feed into the simulations experimental data on the bone geometry and mechanical properties from our collaborators in experimental physics (PIs Jamie Hobbs and Ashley Cadby) and oncology (PIs Nicola Brown and Ingunn Holen). This studentship is funded half by EPSRC and half by the medicine faculty of the University of Sheffield and is associated with a CRUK grant awarded to the PIs.This is an interdisciplinary project that fits into the EPSRC grand challenge of the 'Physics of Life' and into its growth area of 'soft matter and biological physics'. The theoretical modelling of this project aims to develop the computational tools necessary for such work but also to deepen our understanding of the science of the complex, composite, active, polymeric, living materials involved. On the longer term we hope this work will lead to therapeutic advances in the treatment of breast cancer metastatic bone cancer.