The Physics of Cancer

Brain tumors are a particularly lethal form of cancer. One problem in treating a brain tumor is that the cancerous cells can both divide and move. A key to improving treatment of brain tumors is to understand this process of cell proliferation and migration. CBR member Evgeniy Khain, of the Department of Physics, recently published a paper in the July issue of Physical Review E that studies the Migration of Adhesive Glioma Cells: Front Propagation and Fingering (Volume 86, Article Number 011904). Coauthors on the study are Biomedical Sciences: Medical Physics graduate student Nicholas Charteris, former Biomedical Sciences: Medical Physics graduate student Mark Katakowski (now working at Henry Ford Hospital), and Distinguished Professor Michael Chopp. The introduction is reproduced below (with citations removed).

“Glioblastoma multiforme is a highly invasive and malignant brain tumor. Glioma cells not only divide (proliferate) but are also motile; a cell on a substrate is able to migrate its own diameter in 5–10 min. Thus, cells detach from the primary brain tumor and actively move away to the extracellular matrix. Therefore, even if the tumor core is taken out by a surgery, many invasive cells remain intact. Here we try to investigate the collective migration of glioma cells by using both a discrete stochastic lattice approach and a continuum modeling. We also performed in vitro experiments to verify some of the theoretical predictions.”