HPCwire: CFD Simulations Take Cancer Research to a New Dimension

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HPCwire >> Industry >> Life Sciences

June 04, 2008

CFD Simulations Take Cancer Research to a New Dimension

by Kara L. Gray, New Horizon Consulting

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Sixteen milliseconds -- one-fifth the speed of the blink of an eye -- can mean the difference between life and death for millions of people. How can such a miniscule amount of time have such a profound effect on so many? That's about how long it takes for one infinitesimal cancer cell to adhere to a new location within the body. In as little as a day, a new tumor is born in a phenomenon known as metastasizing.

The American Cancer Society forecasts that nearly 1.5 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year alone, and for many patients, fear of metastasis will dominate their treatment. It takes just one cell, measuring about one-fourth the width of a human hair, to begin a new tumor in a secondary site. Often renegade cells travel through the lymphatic system, where they might get caught up in lymph nodes near the primary site. Other times, they travel through the blood stream, where they can make their way to any location within the body.

Exactly what causes cancer cells to break away and travel remains a challenge for cancer researchers, but scientists at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) are zeroing in on how cells adhere in the new location, and what might be done to influence this adhesion. To do so, they are employing pioneering computational fluid dynamics simulations made possible by Harpoon 3D mesh generator and EnSight extreme visualization software by North Carolina-based CEI Inc.

A Sticky Situation

Meghan Hoskins, a Ph.D. candidate in the Bioengineering program at Penn State, under the advisement of Robert Kunz, Ph.D. and Cheng Dong, Ph.D., is examining how cancer cells stick to white blood cells, the defenders of the blood stream, and how the flow of blood affects this adhesion. Her work, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the PSU Applied Research Laboratory, is based on the theory that, as cancer cells travel through the blood stream, they are attracted to areas where white blood cells are at work fighting inflammation.

"If there is already inflammation in the body, that could actually attract the cancer cells," Hoskins says, noting that the patient may be totally unaware of the inflammation. "Cancer cells are also capable of secreting certain proteins that can activate the white blood cells, so there's a possibility that cancer cells can themselves create a localized inflammation, even if there isn't one there to begin with."

This frightening concept, that cancer cells can actually use our own immune system against us, is the foundation of Hoskins research. Her goal is to accurately simulate previous experimental conditions of this phenomenon to validate her model, so that it may be used to further study the metastasis process. To do so, Hoskins is developing a simulated system, based on an existing rectangular test chamber in Professor Dong's lab, designed to study the flow of these proteins to the white blood cells and how this affects the adhesion.

A Model Approach

Existing experimental data suggests that shear rate, the change in flow velocity within the micro capillaries, can affect the adhesion of tumor cells. By devising computational fluid dynamics models of the chamber, Hoskins is calculating velocity profiles throughout the test chamber and attempting to characterize the dynamic forces and biochemistry at work during in vitro cell adhesion.

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