A PHYSICS PERSPECTIVE ON WOUND HEALING
In material physics understanding how systems interact across the interfaces separating them is of central interest. Physics at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), used the framework of disordered elastic systems to study the process of wound healing - the proliferation of cell fronts that eventually join the close a lesion.
Their study identified the scales of the dominant interactions between cells which determine this process the results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will allow better analysis of cell front behavior, in terms of both wound healing and tumor development.
By focusing on macroscopic properties of larger datasets, statistical physics makes it possible to extract an overview of system behavior independent of its specific microscopic character. Applied to biological elements, such as the cell fronts bordering a wound, this approach makes it possible to identify the various interactions which play a defining role during tissue growth, different and healing, but above all to highlight their hierarchy at the different scales observed.
Patrycja Paruch, professor in the department of quantum matter physics at the UNIGE. ''For cancer tumor invasion, or in the event of a wound, cell front proliferation is crucial, but the speed and morphology of the front are highly variable. Experimental observations across multiple length scales to extract general behaviors can allow us to identify these interactions in healthy tissue and diagnose at what level pathological changes can occur, to help combat them. This is where statistical physics comes in''.
