Chaotic tumor environments may trigger cancer cell invasion

In 2024, malignant tumors caused more than 21,300 deaths in Austria, 4.7% more than in 2014. Faced with a similarly pressing global challenge, scientists are striving to better understand what drives cancer cells to grow, spread, and invade healthy tissue. In Science Advances, a team at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now offers new clues: Using a simplified model, the researchers show how a chaotic environment around tumor cells can promote their invasive behavior. This theoretical concept will need to be examined further in real tumor tissue.

Tumors arise from cells that multiply in their tissue of origin and form a collective. While some cells remain there, others invade neighboring tissues, spread throughout the body and ultimately metastasize to the lungs or liver, for example. To do so, individual cells detach from the collective-a process that was thought to be mainly determined by genetic factors. However, in recent years, the non-malignant microenvironment surrounding cancer cells has emerged as another possible driver of malignancy.

Cancer cells and their microenvironment 

Laboratory chips with a forest of pillars 

The researchers used so-called microfluidic chips: small laboratory devices in which tiny amounts of liquid flow through narrow channels. They are like Petri dishes in that they can be used to cultivate tumor cells, but they allow the scientists to control the cells' physical environment much more precisely.

Collective memory

To find out why this happened, the Sixt group turned to their colleagues from ISTA Professor Edouard Hannezo's research group, who specialize in physical principles in biological systems.

"That was the crucial point," Hannezo continues. "In a disordered environment, a cell does not simply encounter disorder at one moment. It has already moved repeatedly through chaotic regions. As a result, the entire boundary of the cell collective changes-it becomes much rougher and develops significantly more finger-like protrusions."

From a physics perspective, the findings point to an even broader principle. The behavior of the tumor cell invasion front can be described using the mathematical framework that also applies to seemingly unrelated physical systems. This reflects a concept known as universality: complex systems can display the same underlying patterns across different scales and materials. Examples include the spreading edge of a coffee stain or a forest fire.

A theoretical concept for cancer researchers and physicists alike 

"It was important to us to formulate and publish this concept in the hope that other researchers with more specialized expertise will take it up," say the two ISTA professors. "The next step is for scientists to follow this approach into real tumor tissue and test it there."

Source:

Institute of Science and Technology Austria

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