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SUMMARY:CECAM - Lorentz Center Workshop: The Extracellular Matrix: How to 
 model structure complexity
DTSTART:20230306T083000
DTEND:20230310T130000
DTSTAMP:20260415T011128Z
UID:11c8603fa2203a7ac5afd9e787b5ebae05a77cf8cb077ecc82cb14ce
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:You can apply to participate and find all the relevant informa
 tion (speakers\, abstracts\, program\,...) on the event website: https://
 www.cecam.org/workshop-details/1173\n\nDESCRIPTION:\nThe extracellular env
 ironment being essentially everything that is not cells is universal acros
 s biology and\, specifically for this workshop\, within the human body. It
  is a key contributor to many human biological processes\, for example\, e
 mbryonic development and cancer cell invasion. It is\, however\, a highly 
 complex structure which can be difficult to describe within a mathematical
  model. This workshop will introduce the extracellular matrix (ECM) as a m
 athematical structure\, within which specific components such as matrix fi
 bres can be modelled explicitly\, in contrast to the traditional approach 
 in which the ECM is described by a density or continuum. There are many ex
 amples of mathematical models incorporating ECM as a density\, for example
 \, in liver fibrosis [7]\, tumour growth [1]\, and in wound healing [2]. I
 t is well-known that cells interact with ECM and feedback between the two 
 changes both cell behaviours and ECM structure. Having a deeper understand
 ing of cell-ECM interactions is vital to our understanding of biological p
 rocesses. To truly understand these interactions we need to build multisca
 le models which take the individual ECM components into account. Agent-bas
 ed cell models (ABMs) are now a common tool\, where the ECM is usually inc
 orporated by considering background diffusion within the environment so th
 at cell-ECM interactions are modelled using hybrid ABMs. Rarely in such a 
 case can the physics and mechanics of cell-ECM interactions be fully taken
  into account. Multiscale models that consider fibres from a continuum per
 spective [3]\, and as rods in an ABM [4] have been explored\, whilst there
  have been recent advancements in considering groups of spherical agents t
 o represent fibres in an ABM [5]. Our interest lies in fully defining ECM 
 structures as additional agents within an ABM to allow the physical and me
 chanical interactions to be accurately captured and analysed in order to i
 ndicate their true contribution to the system.  ECM mediated processes su
 ch as cell durotaxis and topotaxis are modelled more accurately in this wa
 y [6]. Organisers Robyn Shuttleworth and Cicely Macnamara are part of a te
 am developing a PhysiCell add-on (PhysiMESS) which allows ECM structures t
 o be treated as additional agents and allows the user to define the physic
 s of cell-ECM structure interactions. We anticipate that the interdiscipli
 nary projects developed at the workshop would use the capabilities of both
  PhysiCell and PhysiMESS to create detailed models of key biological proce
 sses.\n \nReferences:\n[1] A. Toma\, A. Mang\, T. Schuetz\, S. Becker\, T
 . Buzug\, Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine\, 2012\, 1-1
 1 (2012)\n[2] B. Cumming\, D. McElwain\, Z. Upton\, J. R. Soc. Interface.\
 , 7\, 19-34 (2009)\n[3] R. Shuttleworth\, D. Trucu\, Bull. Math. Biol.\,
  81\, 2176-2219 (2019)\n[4] C. Macnamara\, A. Caiazzo\, I. Ramis-Conde\, 
 M. Chaplain\, Journal of Computational Science\, 40\, 101067 (2020)\n[5] 
 N. Cogno\, R. Bauer\, M. Durante\, Symmetry\, 14\, 90 (2022)\n[6] E. Rens
 \, R. Merks\, iScience\, 23\, 101488 (2020)\n[7] A. Friedman\, W. Hao\, M
 ath. Biosci. and Eng.\, 14(1) (2017)
LOCATION:BCH 2103 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BCH%202103
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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