Margination and adhesion dynamics of tumor cells in a real microvascular network

PLoS Comput Biol. 2021 Feb 19;17(2):e1008746. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008746. eCollection 2021 Feb.

Abstract

In tumor metastasis, the margination and adhesion of tumor cells are two critical and closely related steps, which may determine the destination where the tumor cells extravasate to. We performed a direct three-dimensional simulation on the behaviors of the tumor cells in a real microvascular network, by a hybrid method of the smoothed dissipative particle dynamics and immersed boundary method (SDPD-IBM). The tumor cells are found to adhere at the microvascular bifurcations more frequently, and there is a positive correlation between the adhesion of the tumor cells and the wall-directed force from the surrounding red blood cells (RBCs). The larger the wall-directed force is, the closer the tumor cells are marginated towards the wall, and the higher the probability of adhesion behavior happen is. A relatively low or high hematocrit can help to prevent the adhesion of tumor cells, and similarly, increasing the shear rate of blood flow can serve the same purpose. These results suggest that the tumor cells may be more likely to extravasate at the microvascular bifurcations if the blood flow is slow and the hematocrit is moderate.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cell Adhesion
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Elasticity
  • Erythrocytes / cytology
  • Hematocrit
  • Hemodynamics
  • Humans
  • Microcirculation*
  • Models, Cardiovascular*
  • Neoplasm Metastasis
  • Neoplasms / genetics*
  • Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Rats
  • Stress, Mechanical

Grants and funding

Funding was received for this work to TY from Jilin Province Natural Science Foundation of China (http://kjt.jl.gov.cn), reference no. 20200201275JC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.