(81d) Adhesion and Break-up of Model Metastatic Cancer Cell Clusters during Passage through a Microfluidic Constriction

During the extravasation stage of cancer metastases, cancer cells and clusters exit the blood vessel though constrictions that may be an order of magnitude smaller than the cluster dimension. The physics of the extravasation process involves cell deformation and inter-cell adhesion during through confinement and constriction flow. Using advanced modeling coupling fluid flow and cell mechanics, we investigated how circulating tumor cell clusters are able to traverse a much smaller capillary. We found that depending on the inter-cellular adhesion, the cluster would either become stuck, pass through intact, or break up during passage [1]. The model predictions capture the qualitative behavior of cancer cell cluster passage through microfluidic constrictions, suggesting possible pathway for future treatments.

[1] S.H. Au, B.D. Storey, J.C. Moore, Q. Tang,Y.-L. Chen, S. Javaid, A.F. Sarioglu, R. J. Sullivan, M.W. Madden, R. O’Keefe, D.M. Langenau, D.A. Haber, S. Maheswaran, S.L. Stott and M. Toner* (2016) Clusters of circulating tumor cells traverse capillary-sized vessels, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113, 4947