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| Contributed Talk, Saturday, 12:00 – 12:15 |
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| Fingering instabilities and
cellular pathways in epithelial tissues and their connection to tumor growth
M. Basan, J.-F. Joanny, J. Prost, T. Idema,
M. Lenz, X. Sastre-Garau & T. Risler
Physical Approach of Biological Problems,
Institut Curie, 26 rue d'Ulm, 75248 Paris cedex 05, France |
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| Contact:
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Treating the epithelium as an incompressible viscous fluid with effective
cell division, we find a novel hydrodynamic instability that leads to the
formation of fingering protrusions of the epithelium into its adjacent
stroma. This instability arises for sufficiently large viscosity, cell-division
rate and thickness of the dividing region in the epithelium. Our work provides
physical insight into a potential mechanism by which interfaces between
epithelia and stromas undulate, and potentially by which tissue dysplasia
leads to cancerous invasion
[1].
We have proposed recently that one aspect of homeostasis is the regulation
of tissues to preferred pressures, which can lead to a competition for
space of purely mechanical origin and be an underlying mechanism for tumor
growth [2]. In healthy epithelial tissues, the process of contact inhibition
stabilizes the tissue in impairing cell growth as individual cells come
into contact. We propose a detailed model of the role played by E-cadherin,
ß-catenin and alpha-catenin proteins in the organization of the cell
cytoskeleton, which can affect cell expansion pressure and underlie contact
inhibition. Within this model, various experimental observations of tumorigeneous
phenotypes - such as uncontrolled tissue expansion and epithelial protrusions
- find a common explanatory framework [3].
| [1] |
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M. Basan, J.-F. Joanny, J. Prost, T.
Risler, Phys. Rev. Lett., 106 (15): 158101 (2011). |
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| [2] |
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M. Basan, T. Risler, J.-F. Joanny, X.
Sastre-Garau, J. Prost, HFSP Journal, 3 (4): 265 (2009). |
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| [3] |
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M. Basan, T. Idema, M. Lenz, J.-F. Joanny,
T. Risler, Biophys. J., 98 (12): 2770 (2010). |
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