Speaker: Prof. Herbert Levine (Satish Dhawan Visiting Chair Professor, IISc)

Title: Cell – ECM interactions and their relevance for cancer progression

Abstract:

During metastasis, tumor cells must traverse fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) en route to the circulation. Conversely, immune cells must traverse the same medium en route to attacking a tumor. Thus, the study of the reciprocal feedbacks between cell motility and ECM is a crucial aspect of understanding cancer progression and its possible interdiction. This understanding is made more difficult by the highly nonlinear mechanics of ECM and by the multiple modes of cell motion in complex media. This talk will focus on recent progress as well as open issues in this rapidly advancing research topic.

About the Speaker: 

Herbert Levine is a University Distinguished Professor of Physics and Bioengineering at Northeastern University. He is also the co-director of a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center devoted to theoretical biological physics. He earned his Ph.D. and an M.A. in physics from Princeton University and a B.S. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For several decades, he has been an acknowledged leader in applying methods from physical science to diverse living systems – self-organization of bacterial colonies, directed motion of eukaryotic cells, biophysical modeling of cancer progression and metastasis, and tumor-immune interactions. He spent 25 years on the faculty of UCSD before moving to Rice University in 2012. He has served as an Associate Editor of Biophysical Journal and as the Editor-in-Chief of Physical Biology. He is a Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) & National Academy of Sciences (NAS).