Dr hab. Konstantin Tretiakov, prof. IFM PAN oraz dr inż. Jakub Narojczyk są współautorami pracy opublikowanej w prestiżowym czasopiśmie NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2018) 9:4539.

Wkład naszych pracowników do artykułu w Nature dotyczy opracowania teorii procesów stochastycznych, za pomocą, których można opisać ruch komórek zdrowych oraz rakowych i jest kolejnym ważnym krokiem w walce z nowotworami.

Lévy-like movement patterns of metastatic cancer cells revealed in microfabricated systems and implicated in vivo

Sabil Huda; Bettina Weigelin; Katarina Wolf; Konstantin V Tretiakov; Konstantin Polev; Gary Wilk; Masatomo Iwasa; Fateme S Emami; Jakub W Narojczyk; Michal Banaszak; Siowling Soh; Didzis Pilans; Amir Vahid; Monika Makurath; Peter Friedl; Gary G Borisy; Kristiana Kandere-Grzybowska; Bartosz A Grzybowski

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2018) 9:4539|.

Large-scale statistics describing various types of cells migrating on linear microtracks reveal that metastatic cancer cells follow a qualitatively different motility strategy than their non-invasive counterparts. Specifically, the trajectories of metastatic cells display “clusters” of small steps that are interspersed with very long “flights”. Such motions are characterized by heavy-tailed, truncated power-law distributions of persistence times and are consistent with the so-called Lévy walks that are also often employed by animal predators searching for scarce prey or food sources. In contrast, non-metastatic cancerous cells perform simple diffusive motions. These findings are supported by preliminary experiments with cancer cells migrating away from primary tumors in vivo. The use of appropriate chemical inhibitors targeting actin-binding proteins allows for “reprogramming” the Lévy walks of metastatic cells into either diffusive or ballistic motions, giving hope for a progress in the cancer treatment.