Modeling Collective Motility in Metastasis: Clustering, Alignment, and Adhesion

Speaker: Kees Storm (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Abstract:

Understanding how cancer cells organize, migrate, and invade their surroundings is essential for unraveling the physical mechanisms that underlie metastatic dissemination. In this seminar I will discuss two recent findings from our group, combining computational modeling with experimental validation to investigate cluster formation and collective invasion in cancer.

First, I will discuss how motile cell clusters can arise within heterogeneous model tumors through a competition between cell–cell alignment interactions and confinement by surrounding nonmotile cells. Using a modified Cellular Potts–Vicsek framework, we identify an optimal alignment regime that maximizes cluster size, highlighting how dense cellular environments suppress excessive clustering even when alignment interactions are strong.

Second, I will discuss the interplay between cell–cell adhesion, cell–matrix adhesion, and traction forces during ECM invasion. Building on experimental data from our partner group in Leiden, we combine integrin-knockout experiments in breast cancer cell lines with a predictive Cellular Potts model, to understand how shows how loss of integrin-mediated cell–matrix adhesion alters invasion patterns, cluster formation, and tumoroid morphology. This allows usto predictively link readily measurable morphological markers such as branching and cluster detachment to invasive potential.

Together, these results provide some physical perspective on how alignment, adhesion, and microenvironmental structure jointly regulate the emergence and dynamics of invasive cancer cell clusters.

This seminar will take place in room D1.111