The role of cell-cell adhesion in wound healing

Abstract

We present a stochastic model which describes fronts of cells invading a wound. In the model cells can move, proliferate, and experience cell-cell adhesion. We find several qualitatively different regimes of front motion and analyze the transitions between them. Above a critical value of adhesion and for small proliferation large isolated clusters are formed ahead of the front. This is mapped onto the well-known ferromagnetic phase transition in the Ising model. For large adhesion, and larger proliferation the clusters become connected (at some fixed time). For adhesion below the critical value the results are similar to our previous work which neglected adhesion. The results are compared with experiments, and possible directions of future work are proposed.