ArticleNature communications2018
Lévy-like movement patterns of metastatic cancer cells revealed in microfabricated systems and implicated in vivo.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Adipose-mimetic granular hydrogels uncover biophysical cues driving breast cancer invasion.Cell biomaterials · 2026Article
- HURP Silencing Differentially Impacts Spindle Architecture and Metastatic Behavior in Breast Cancer Cell Lines.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Matrix stress relaxation promotes glioblastoma cell migration in a ligand-specific manner.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Glassy adhesion dynamics govern transitions between sub-diffusive and super-diffusive cancer cell migration on viscoelastic substrates.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Methods to analyze cell migration data: fundamentals and practical guidelines.Nature methods · 2026Review
- The fascial-interstitial system and the sanjiao-mocou system: an analogy-based hypothesis for the anatomical basis of meridian pathways.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- Lévy statistics define anxiety and depression in mice subjected to chronic stress.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Adipose-mimetic granular hydrogels uncover biophysical cues driving breast cancer invasion.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Sex-based differences in cell migration on aligned topographies.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli induces Entamoeba histolytica superdiffusion movement on fibronectin by reducing traction forces.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- pERK transition-induced directional mode switching promotes epithelial tumor cell migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Investigation of Cell Mechanics and Migration on DDR2-Expressing Neuroblastoma Cell Line.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Review
- Deposited footprints let cells switch between confined, oscillatory, and exploratory migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Size-dependent self-avoidance enables superdiffusive migration in macroscopic unicellulars.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Instant processing of large-scale image data with FACT, a real-time cell segmentation and tracking algorithm.Cell reports methods · 2023Article
- Population heterogeneity in the fractional master equation, ensemble self-reinforcement, and strong memory effects.Physical review. E · 2023Article
- Random walk and cell morphology dynamics inFrontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Article
- Quantification of cell migration: metrics selection to model application.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Metastatic cancer cells differ from their non-metastatic counterparts not only in terms of molecular composition and genetics, but also by the very strategy they employ for locomotion. Here, we analyzed large-scale statistics for cells migrating on linear microtracks to show that metastatic cancer cells follow a qualitatively different movement strategy than their non-invasive counterparts. The trajectories of metastatic cells display clusters of small steps that are interspersed with long "flights". Such movements are characterized by heavy-tailed, truncated power law distributions of persistence times and are consistent with the Lévy walks that are also often employed by animal predators searching for scarce prey or food sources. In contrast, non-metastatic cancerous cells perform simple diffusive movements. These findings are supported by preliminary experiments with cancer cells migrating away from primary tumors in vivo. The use of chemical inhibitors targeting actin-binding proteins allows for "reprogramming" the Lévy walks into either diffusive or ballistic movements.
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