Predicted Move

Crawling through a new environment, a cancer cell reaches out. In this simulation an invadopodium (top) pokes out like a nose, leading the cell into the surrounding extracellular matrix. Driving the simulation, a complex mathematical model helps researchers ponder simple questions – how do invadopodia work? How can we stop them? They find moving parts in the cell’s cytoskeleton (coloured lines) balance internal and external forces: as the cell prods upwards, bursts of myosin (red) activity help to keep the nucleus in place while proteins at the tip of the invadopodium nibble away at chemicals in the matrix (black). Repeated cycles of these movements direct the cell’s persistent creep. While these dynamics mirror those of real cancer cells, the model also predicts ways in which drugs might snarl up this complex machinery, slowing or stopping metastasis.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video from work by Min-Cheol Kim and colleagues
• Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Scientific Reports, January 2022