Modeling migration in cell colonies in two and three dimensional substrates with varying stiffnesses

Abstract

Mechanotaxis is the directed migration of a cell due to forces it senses from the substrate, which are caused mainly by the presence of other cells or by external traction forces. The resulting cell movement plays important biological roles for example in wound healing, the functions of the immune system, organogenesis and metastatic diseases. We present a model to simulate collective cell migration based on the forces that cells exert on elastic substrata. It characterizes the influence of cell and substrate stiffness on the collective migration of cells. The simulations initially represent a two-dimensional (monolayer) problem, and are then extended to represent migration in a three-dimensional extracellular matrix. The model is generic and can be utilized to study a variety of biological processes where migration occurs including tissue repair, cancer and infiltration of white blood cells to an infection site.