Analysis of cell contact inhibition during growth of epithelial tissue

The question of dominating mechanisms in the development of healthy epithelial tissue is subject to contemporary research, especially for tumour progression. While experiments suggest, that biomechanical cell-cell-interactions are crucial for the development of the tissue, it is usually oversimplified or neglected in theoretical approaches. For instance, the impact of cell migration, competition or contact inhibition on development of a cell colony is barely quantified. Puliafito et al. performed experiments on MDCK-cells (Madin-Darby-Canine-Kidney-cells) [1] and proposed, that the behaviour of the colony during the growth phase can be solely explained by contact inhibition To test this hypothesis, we develop a cell-based model and compare the numerical results with the experimental data. We introduce a novel cell-based model based on a probabilistic cellular automaton as our basic model and which is capable of emulating single cell behaviour like persistent cell migration, growth or proliferation and cell-cell-interactions like adhesion. The model parameters are calibrated by evaluating experimental single cell tracking measurements. Subsequently, we compare the temporal development of emergent quantities in the model like colony area, density, shape, cell size distribution, effective cell proliferation rate and the characteristic length scale of collective cell motion with the experiment.