Section: New Results

Deformable Cell Modeling: biomechanics and Liver regeneration

• Biomechanically mediated growth control of cancer cells The key intriguing novelty was that the same agent-based model after a single parameter has been calibrated with growth data for multicellular spheroids without application of external mechanical stress by adapting a single parameter, permitted to correctly predict the growth speed of multicellular spheroids of 5 different cell lines subject of external mechanical stress. Hereby the same mechanical growth control stress function was used without any modification [44]. The prediction turned out to be correct independent of the experimental method used to exert the stress, whereby once a mechanical capsule has been used, once dextran has been used in the experiments.

• Regeneration of liver with the Deformable Cell Model. The key novelty was the implementation of the model itself, but an interesting novel result is that the DCM permits closure of a pericentral liver lobule lesion generated by drug-induced damage with about 5 times smaller active migration force due to the ability of the cell to strongly deform and squeeze into narrow spaces between the capillaries. This finding stresses that a precise mechanical description is important in view of quantitatively correct modeling results [142]. The deformable cell model however could be used to calibrate the interaction forces of the computationally much cheaper center-based model to arrive at almost the same results.