#31 · Systems biology

Continuum mechanics models of growing cell populations, tumors and epithelia

The dominant thread is mechanically grounded modelling of multicellular tissues, in which population-level or cell-level state is coupled to forces and kinematics. One preprint gives analytical bounds and stability results for segregated travelling waves in a pressure-based model of heterogeneous cell populations. A second develops a thermodynamically consistent continuum framework coupling finite growth kinematics with multi-constituent mixture theory, applied to a finite-element avascular tumor growth model. A third extends an off-lattice cell-centre model with a Dynamic Reference Frame to capture subcellular remodelling in epithelial monolayers under mechanical forces. Shared features are explicit mechanical constitutive structure and attention to growth and remodelling kinematics. The third item addresses remodelling rather than tumor-scale growth, so the common thread is methodological rather than a single biological system.