This review presents the different physical descriptions of cell assemblies. After a short
presentation of discrete models, very popular in studies of epithelial tissues, we focus more …

The forces exerted by cells on their surroundings play an integral role in both physiological
processes and disease progression. Traction force microscopy is a noninvasive technique …

A tumor is composed of heterogeneous cell population, which is known as tumor stroma. In
particular, blood vessels have an indispensable role in the tumor microenvironment acting …

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic condition characterized by the autoimmune
damage of pancreatic β cells. As an alternative to continuous exogenous insulin …

Tumor invasion within the interstitial space is critically regulated by the force balance
between cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) and cell-cell interactions. Interstitial flows (IFs) are …

Multicellular tumor spheroids are attracting more attention as a physiologically relevant in
vitro tumor model for biomedical research. The size of spheroids is one of the critical …

Three-dimensional tissue culture, and particularly spheroid models, have recently been
recognized as highly relevant in drug screening, toxicity assessment and tissue engineering …

Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into
separate regions, ie, demix. Does the same phenomenon occur in confluent biological …

An important open question in the modeling of biological tissues is how to identify the right
scale for coarse-graining, or equivalently, the right number of degrees of freedom. For …

Cell spheroids are in vitro multicellular model systems that mimic the crowded micro-
environment of biological tissues. Their mechanical characterization can provide valuable …