Stochastic and Heterogeneous Cancer Cell Migration: Experiment and Theory

Cell migration, an essential process for normal cell development and cancer metastasis, differs from a simple random walk: the mean-square displacement (〈(Δr)2(t)〉) of cells sometimes shows non-Fickian behavior, and the spatiotemporal correlation function (G(r, t)) of cells is often non-Gaussian. We find that this intriguing cell migration should be attributed to heterogeneity in a cell population, even one with a homogeneous genetic background. There are two limiting types of heterogeneity in a cell population: cellular heterogeneity and temporal heterogeneity. Cellular heterogeneity accounts for the cell-to-cell variation in migration capacity, while temporal heterogeneity arises from the temporal noise in the migration capacity of single cells. We illustrate that both cellular and temporal heterogeneity need to be taken into account simultaneously to elucidate cell migration. We investigate the two-dimensional migration of A549 lung cancer cells using time-lapse microscopy and find that the migration of A549 cells is Fickian but has a non-Gaussian spatiotemporal correlation. We find that when a theoretical model considers both cellular and temporal heterogeneity, the model reproduces all of the anomalous behaviors of cancer cell migration.