Speaker
Description
Cell motility represents an important hallmark of immune processes governing cell interactions, communication and function. Determining how external factors, such as chemokine gradients and structural elements, influence immune cell motility is therefore of critical importance to understand the development of immune responses and their impact on pathological changes within complex tissue environments. Here, by combining individual cell-based models using the cellular Potts modelling (CPM) framework with theoretical analyses, we could reveal how the mode of cell motility is shaped by porous environments, as represented by extracellular matrices (ECM). Geometrical properties of these structures define characteristic cell motility regimes, with spatial heterogeneities in tissue environments effectively guiding cell movement and leading to nonhomogeneous cell distributions that can determine cellular interactions. By developing computationally efficient graph-based modelling approaches, we are able to combine them with time-lapse microscopy data on cell dynamics to infer and predict how host-pathogen interactions are shaped by complex tissue environments. Our analyses, as well as analyses of experimental data, illustrate the necessity to account for spatial interactions when aiming to determine the key processes governing disease progression and tissue pathology.
