Guillermo Vilanova

University of Oviedo | UNIOVI · Área de Matemática Aplicada

The actin cytoskeleton is remarkably adaptable and multifunctional. It often organizes into nematic bundles such as contractile rings or stress fibers. However, how a uniform and isotropic actin gel self-organizes into dense nematic bundles is not fully understood. Here, using an active gel model accounting for nematic order and density variations,...

Foxp3 acetylation is essential to regulatory T (Treg) cell stability and function, but pharmacologically increasing it remains an unmet challenge. Here, we report that small-molecule compounds that inhibit TIP60, an acetyltransferase known to acetylate Foxp3, unexpectedly increase Foxp3 acetylation and Treg induction. Utilizing a dual experimental/...

The actin cytoskeleton is remarkably adaptable and multifunctional. It often organizes into nematic bundles such as contractile rings or stress fibers. However, how a uniform and isotropic actin gel self-organizes into dense nematic bundles is not understood. Here, using an active gel model accounting for nematic order and density variations, we id...

The structure and dynamics of important biological quasi-two-dimensional systems, ranging from cytoskeletal gels to tissues, are controlled by nematic order, defects and activity. Continuum hydrodynamic descriptions combined with numerical simulations have been used to understand such complex systems, but the physical interpretation of different ac...

The molecular signaling pathways that orchestrate angiogenesis have been widely studied, but the role of biophysical cues has received less attention. Interstitial flow is unavoidable in vivo, and has been shown to dramatically change the neovascular patterns, but the mechanisms by which flow regulates angiogenesis remain poorly understood. Here, w...

Tumors promote the growth of new capillaries through a process called angiogenesis. Blood flows through these new vessels providing cancerous cells with nutrients. However, because tumor-induced vasculature is defective, blood flow is heterogeneous both in space and time. As a result, regional hypoxia and acidosis may appear, increasing the maligna...

Angiogenesis, the growth of capillaries from pre-existing ones, plays a key role in cancer progression. Tumours release tumour angiogenic factors (TAFs) into the extracellular matrix (ECM) that trigger angiogenesis once they reach the vasculature. The neovasculature provides nutrients and oxygen to the tumour. In the ECM, the interstitial fluid mov...

Cancerous tumours have the ability to recruit new blood vessels through a process called angiogenesis. By stimulating vascular growth, tumours get connected to the circulatory system, receive nutrients and open a way to colonize distant organs. Tumour-induced vascular networks become unstable in the absence of tumour angiogenic factors (TAFs). They...

Angiogenesis is the growth of new capillaries from preexisting ones. The ability to trigger angiogenesis is one of the hallmarks of cancer, and is a necessary step for a tumor to become malignant. This paper discusses computational modeling of tumor-induced angiogenesis with particular reference to mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and c...

Significance We perform a tissue-scale, personalized computer simulation of prostate cancer (PCa) growth in a patient, based on prostatic anatomy extracted from medical images. To do so, we propose a mathematical model for the growth of PCa. The model includes an equation for the reference biomarker of PCa: the prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Henc...

Malignant tumors have the ability to trigger the growth of new vasculature toward them through a complex process called tumor angiogenesis. These new blood vessels provide cancerous cells with sufficient nutrients for growth and a means to escape the primary tumor and invade other tissues. This paper proposes a three-dimensional model that aims at...

We present a mathematical model for vascular tumor growth. We use phase fields to model cellular growth and reaction-diffusion equations for the dynamics of angiogenic factors and nutrients. The model naturally predicts the shift from avascular to vascular growth at realistic scales. Our computations indicate that the negative regulation of the Del...

Disappearance of central necrosis in small tumor spheroids. Additional numerical example that reproduces the experiments reported in [83], where the authors observe the disappearance of the central necrosis after vascularization of tumor spheroids of size approximately 3 times smaller than those considered in the main text of the paper. (PDF)

Disappearance of central necrosis in small tumor spheroids. Top-left: Geometry of the computational domain. Top-right: Time evolution of the necrotic area. Bottom-left: Initially, the necrotic core grows after angiogenesis. Bottom-right: Later on, the necrotic core shrinks until its complete disappearance. The two bottom sub-figures are both zoomed...

The growth of new vascular networks from pre-existing capillaries (angiogenesis) plays a pivotal role in tumor development. Mathematical modeling of tumor-induced angiogenesis may help understand the underlying biology of the process and provide new hypotheses for experimentation. Here, we couple an existing deterministic continuum theory with a di...

Tumor angiogenesis, the growth of new capillaries from preexisting ones promoted by the starvation and hypoxia of cancerous cell, creates complex biological patterns. These patterns are captured by a hybrid model that involves high-order partial differential equations coupled with mobile, agent-based components. The continuous equations of the mode...