ART-AI & Centre for Therapeutic Innovation Seminar
We are pleased to have Professor Robert Insall, who is a Professor of Computational Cell Biology at UCL, join us for this joint ART-AI & Centre for Therapeutic Innovation seminar entitled ‘Making your own path – how cells steer themselves to spread cancer, control immunity and even solve mazes‘.
This seminar will take place in person in 1W 3.30, on Tuesday 20th May 2025, 13.15pm-14.40pm (GMT). There is also an option to join online. For more information, please e-mail [email protected].
Title Making your own path – how cells steer themselves to spread cancer, control immunity and even solve mazes
Abstract
Cell migration is often guided by external chemical gradients, which are usually though to be created elsewhere, but cells can also make their own gradients and steer themselves. I will explore how migrating cells consume or modify attractants that are constantly available, creating local gradients that can steer movement. Use of these gradients allows cells to obtain far more information about their environments than was expected, allowing amoebas and cancer cells to solve complex mazes. Recent work shows an opposite mechanism – cells can make self-attractants in complex patterns, again allowing them to explore their environments in unprecedented detail. I will show that immune cell migration nearly always uses both processes, using a mixture of computational models, in vitro and in vivo experiments.
Bio
To follow
