Biophysical Reviews and Letters

There exist many reviews on the biological and biochemical interactions of cancer cells and endothelial cells during the transmigration and tissue invasion of cancer cells. For the malignant progression of cancer, the ability to metastasize is a prerequisite. In particular, this means that certain cancer cells possess the property to migrate through the endothelial lining into blood or lymph vessels, and are possibly able to transmigrate through the endothelial lining into the connective tissue and follow up their invasion path in the targeted tissue. On the molecular and biochemical level the transmigration and invasion steps are well-defined, but these signal transduction pathways are not yet clear and less understood in regards to the biophysical aspects of these processes.

To functionally characterize the malignant transformation of neoplasms and subsequently reveal the underlying pathway(s) and cellular properties, which help cancer cells to facilitate cancer progression, the biomechanical properties of cancer cells and their microenvironment come into focus in the physics-of-cancer driven view on the metastasis process of cancers. Hallmarks for cancer progression have been proposed, but they still lack the inclusion of specific biomechanical properties of cancer cells and interacting surrounding endothelial cells of blood or lymph vessels. As a cancer cell is embedded in a special environment, the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix also cannot be neglected. Therefore, in this review it is proposed that a novel hallmark of cancer that is still elusive in classical tumor biological reviews should be included, dealing with the aspect of physics in cancer disease such as the natural selection of an aggressive (highly invasive) subtype of cancer cells displaying a certain adhesion or chemokine receptor on their cell surface.

Today, the physical aspects can be analyzed by using state-of-the-art biophysical methods. Thus, this review will present current cancer research in a different light from a physical point of view with respect to cancer cell mechanics and the special and unique role of the endothelium on cancer cell invasion.

The physical view on cancer disease may lead to novel insights into cancer disease and will help to overcome the classical views on cancer. In addition, in this review it will be discussed how physics of cancer can help to reveal and propose the functional mechanism which cancer cells use to invade connective tissue and transmigrate through the endothelium to finally metastasize.

Finally, in this review it will be demonstrated how biophysical measurements can be combined with classical analysis approaches of tumor biology. The insights into physical interactions between cancer cells, the endothelium and the microenvironment may help to answer some "old," but still important questions in cancer disease progression.

Computational radiation biophysics is a rapidly growing area that is contributing, alongside new hardware technologies, to ongoing developments in cancer imaging and therapy. Recent advances in theoretical and computational modeling have enabled the simulation of discrete, event-by-event interactions of very low energy (≪ 100 eV) electrons with water in its liquid thermodynamic phase. This represents a significant advance in our ability to investigate the initial stages of radiation induced biological damage at the molecular level. Such studies are important for the development of novel cancer treatment strategies, an example of which is given by microbeam radiation therapy (MRT). Here, new results are shown demonstrating that when excitations and ionizations are resolved down to nano-scales, their distribution extends well outside the primary microbeam path, into regions that are not directly irradiated. This suggests that radiation dose alone is insufficient to fully quantify biological damage. These results also suggest that the radiation cross-fire may be an important clue to understanding the different observed responses of healthy cells and tumor cells to MRT.

A theory of fractional kinetics of glial cancer cells is presented. A role of the migration-proliferation dichotomy in the fractional cancer cell dynamics in the outer-invasive zone is discussed and explained in the framework of a continuous time random walk. The main suggested model is based on a construction of a 3D comb model, where the migration-proliferation dichotomy becomes naturally apparent and the outer-invasive zone of glioma cancer is considered as a fractal composite with a fractal dimension D_fr < 3.

It is shown that the molecules of double — stranded DNA form a liquid-crystaline ordered phase, depending on the value of parameter of Flory-Huggins, DNA aspect ratio, energy of attraction between the molecules of DNA and volume fraction of the flexible polymer. Liquid crystalline order formation in double-stranded DNA, immeresed in the polymeric matrix occurs with increase of the volume fraction of the flexible polymer. The orrdered phase formation in double-stranded DNA is governed by volume fraction of DNA and by temperature. The results clearly show the effect of the polymer matrix on the ordering in DNA molecules.