Numerical investigation quantifies membrane stresses of tumor cells in blood vessels

Some types of cancer cells are known to spread quickly and invasively using the body’s bloodstream, but few studies have actually quantified the cells’ stress states associated with their motion in the blood. Jing et al. developed a numerical investigation to understand the biomechanics of circulating tumor cells more accurately in blood vessels of varying sizes.

The authors found in narrower blood vessels, tumor cells of larger or comparable size are the primary reason the membranes experience tension, or force along the entire membrane. In larger blood vessels, however, red blood cells can concentrate tumor cells along the vessels’ walls, leading to localized, increased tension along the inside perimeter of the vessels.

“Although the margination effect is expected to be enhanced with higher hematocrit in large vessels, the present work makes it clear that the increase of hematocrit promotes membrane tensions not only by increasing the local shear rate with the margination, but also by limiting the relaxation of the membrane tension by suppressing circulating tumor cells’ rotational motion,” author Xiaobo Gong said.

To numerically simulate tumor cells circulating in blood vessels, the team used the immersed boundary method, which considers both the motions and deformations of the cells. They further set up the simulations to examine, among other parameters, the deviatoric tensions, the principal tension, and the average isotropic tensions of those circulating tumor cells in the membrane as references for the mechanobiological study of cancer cell mechanics.

For future studies, the researchers plan to use a more realistic cell model that takes into account more details about the cells’ and membranes’ structures and properties.

Source: “Effects of fluid-cell-vessel interactions on the membrane tensions of circulating tumor cells in capillary blood flows,” by Peng Jing, Satoshi Ii, Xiaolong Wang, Kazuyasu Sugiyama, Shigeho Noda, and Xiaobo Gong, Physics of Fluids (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0080488 .