About her postdoctoral project

The mechanisms that drive the migration and guidance of cell assemblies during embryonic development or cancer metastasis are diverse and remain poorly understood. Based on a perturbative approach, our project aims at investigating the dynamical migratory response of both single cells and multi-cellular aggregates to external chemical and/or mechanical stimuli. The LAI has recently developed quantitative in vitro assays based on microfluidics and micropatterning to characterize single cell migration versus mechanical and biochemical cues such as confinement, gradient of soluble chemokines and substrates patterned with anchored biofactors. We propose to extend this experimental setup to (i) study the collective migration of 3D multi-cellular aggregates which are able to spontaneously migrate on a soft substrate (ii) understand how their tissue organization and migratory properties are modulated by chemical gradients and/or externally applied pressures. We aim at determining which are the analogies between the migratory responses of these two experimental systems.