A comet supercomputer helps to understand the mechanical process of cancer cell growth

According to the World Health Organization, one in six deaths worldwide is caused by cancer; however, these deaths were not due to primary-malignant tumors; the deaths were caused by the spread of cancer cells to surrounding cigarettes and subsequent tumor growth.

These figs, which are largely made up of collagen, have been the focus of a recent collaborative study by a team from Stanford University and Purdue University. To accomplish the task, the researchers used the Comet supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, located on the UC San Diego campus.

Our code used for this analysis is computer-expensive, which means it will take a long time to run a single simulation, and thanks to Comet we were able to run a large number of symbols simultaneously to study a wide parametric space. Today, it is very challenging to find donations or money that can be used to buy nodes or time on supercomputers even though such computing power is essential to accomplish this research. “

Taeyoon Kim, Associate Professor, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University

The study describes the mechanical process of cell division begins when a mother undergoes major changes in shape to separate her chromosomes and other substances before they themselves are cleared in two daughter cells. Many multivariate studies have focused on the biological aspects of cell division, but this research describes the process from a recent mechanical point of view. Advanced science magazine paper entitled “Cell Pushing Forces During Mitosis Drive Mitotic Resolution in Collagen Gels.”

“Our study focused on cancer cell division because that is what drives the growth of primary and metastatic tumors,” said Ovijit Chaudhuri, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford. “Although the biology of cancer cell division has been studied in detail, the mechanical aspects of how cells physically divide in tumors are less clear, and advancing an understanding of this could lead to new treatments for tumors. to handle. “

Prior to this research, there has been no study of how physically dividing cells in collagen gels. The researchers examined three potential mechanisms for localized cells that need to be divided: mitotic expansion, external force generation (pushing), or matrix contamination. The findings of this study identified the pushing mechanism as a key feature in allowing mitosis to occur.

“Although this process has been extensively studied on petri dishes – or plastic sheets – cells in our cigarettes need to do this while they are surrounded by cells and scaffolding called the extracellular matrix. , “explained Chaudhuri.” In our recent study, we report how the mother cell pushes on its surroundings during separation to make room for the daughter cells. “