Achievement

Colin Paul's work has focused on the influences and mechanisms of contact guidance in cell migration. Many researchers have noted that if you put a barrier in the path of a cell, the cell will crawl along that barrier; this phenomenon is called contact guidance. Contact guidance may be particularly important in cancer metastasis, as the proteins surrounding a tumor may impact how cancer cells migrate away from the tumor and into other parts of the body, and how the body’s defensive cells may be blocked from entering the tumor. Specifically, we are studying how contact guidance controls cell “decision making” at intersection points. Our data suggests that cells can polarize along a three-dimensional surface, following that surface in asymmetric environments in the absence of other guidance cues. As the environment becomes more symmetric, other cell trafficking mechanisms, notably chemotaxis, become more important.