Collective Cellular Processes
During wound healing, keratinocytes migrate across the wound bed to establish a barrier for immune defense and provide structural and mechanical support for regeneration. Failure to establish this new barrier can result in a chronic wounds, which impact over 6 million Americans each year.
HGSOC metastasizes by detaching from an established tumor, floating in the peritoneal fluid, and reattaching. Both single cells and clusters of cells detach, but it is unknown what regulates this decision.
Current Projects
Individual cell migration is described by metrics such as speed and persistence. We have examined these individual behaviors for keratinocytes and determined that the persistence of individual cells had the strongest impact on overall sheet movement. We have since identified conditions that maximally stimulate persistence and are decoding the downstream signaling mechanisms involved (with collaborator Kristyn Masters, UC-Denver).
Wound healing and cancer progression are dynamic processes that result in changes to the ECM composition and physical properties over time. We have examined how increases in stiffness lead to increased collective detachment of HGSOC cells to initiate metastasis. We are currently examining how changes in ECM composition and physical properties impact collective migration.
Cellular migration is inherently a physical process. We seek to understand how cellular forces influence the coordination of individual cells moving in a collective setting (with collaborator Jacob Notbohm, UW-Madison).