Andreas Deutsch

• Diplom
• Head of Department at TUD Dresden University of Technology

The transition from individual to collective motion plays a significant role in many biological processes. While the implications of different types of particle-particle interactions for the emergence of particular modes of collective motion have been well studied, it is unclear how particular types of individual migration patterns influence collec...

The transition from individual to collective motion plays a significant role in many biological processes. While the implications of different types of particle-particle interactions for the emergence of particular modes of collective motion have been well studied, it is unclear how particular types of individual migration patterns influence collec...

Cancer is a significant global health issue, with treatment challenges arising from intratumor heterogeneity. This heterogeneity stems mainly from somatic evolution, causing genetic diversity within the tumor, and phenotypic plasticity of tumor cells leading to reversible phenotypic changes. However, the interplay of both factors has not been rigor...

Algae have played a crucial role in shaping our planet’s atmosphere, as they transform CO2 into the oxygen we breathe. They contribute to building a sustainable future by aiding in the fight against climate change, providing new energy sources and essential resources for nutrition. NATHANAEL PRINGSHEIM (1823–1894), a pioneer of modern botany and a...

Cancer is a significant global health issue, with treatment challenges arising from intratumor heterogeneity. This heterogeneity stems mainly from somatic evolution, causing genetic diversity within the tumor, and phenotypic plasticity of tumor cells leading to reversible phenotypic changes. However, the interplay of both factors has not been rigor...

We introduce a novel lattice-gas cellular automaton (LGCA) for compressible vectorial active matter with polar and nematic velocity alignment. Interactions are, by construction, zero-range. For polar alignment, we show the system undergoes a phase transition that promotes aggregation with strong resemblance to the classic zero-range process (ZRP)....

Several discrete models for diffusive motion are known to exhibit checkerboard artifacts, absent in their continuous analogues. We study the origins of the checkerboard artifact in the discrete heat equation and show that this artifact decays exponentially in time when following either of two strategies: considering the present state of each lattic...

The botanist NATHANAEL PRINGSHEIM (1823–1894) was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and a successor to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Jena. Through his research on algae, Pringsheim discovered sexuality as a fundamental principle even in "lower" life forms. In doing so, he revolutionized the contemporary understanding of biology. This book provides...

Tumor cell invasion into heterogenous interstitial tissues consisting of network-, channel- or rift-like architecture involves both matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-mediated tissue remodeling and cell-shape adaptation to tissue geometry. 3D models composed of either porous or linearly aligned architectures have added to the understanding of physical...

In this article, we review the role of mathematical modelling to elucidate the impact of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in tumor progression and therapy design. We first outline the biology of TAMs, and its current application in tumor therapies, and their experimental methods that provide insights into tumor cell-macrophage interactions. We t...

The editors present a special issue of Physica D dedicated to discrete models of complex systems. Three main axes structure this issue: simple cellular automata, networks and models of natural or artificial complex systems.

Metastatic tumor cell invasion into interstitial tissue is a mechanochemical process that responds to tissue cues and further involves proteolytic remodeling of the tumor stroma. How matrix density, tissue guidance and the ability of proteolytic tissue remodeling cooperate and determine decision-making of invading tumor cells in complex-structured...

Countries around the world implement nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Design of efficient NPIs requires identification of the structure of the disease transmission network. We here identify the key parameters of the COVID-19 transmission network for time periods before, during, and after the application of...

Collective dynamics in multicellular systems such as biological organs and tissues plays a key role in biological development, regeneration, and pathological conditions. Collective tissue dynamics—understood as population behaviour arising from the interplay of the constituting discrete cells—can be studied with on- and off-lattice agent-based mode...

Countries around the world implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases but failed to eradicate the disease. Design of efficient NPIs requires identification of the structure of the underlying transmission network. We combine Bayesian parameter inference with a network-based epidemiological model that a...

Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, with or without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue level. Here, we study spatio-temporal pattern formation in a population of cells exhibiting phenotypic pl...

Collective dynamics in multicellular systems such as biological organs and tissues plays a key role in biological development, regeneration, and pathological conditions. Collective tissue dynamics - understood as population behaviour arising from the interplay of the constituting discrete cells - can be studied with on- and off-lattice agent-based...

Plasticity of cancer invasion and metastasis depends on the ability of cancer cells to switch between collective and single-cell dissemination, controlled by cadherin-mediated cell–cell junctions. In clinical samples, E-cadherin-expressing and -deficient tumours both invade collectively and metastasize equally, implicating additional mechanisms con...

Biological processes, such as embryonic development, wound repair and cancer invasion, or bacterial swarming and fruiting body formation, involve collective motion of cells as a coordinated group. Collective cell motion of eukaryotic cells often includes interactions that result in polar alignment of cell velocities, while bacterial patterns typica...

Collective migration has become a paradigm for emergent behaviour in systems of moving and interacting individual units resulting in coherent motion. In biology, these units are cells or organisms. Collective cell migration is important in embryonic development, where it underlies tissue and organ formation, as well as pathological processes, such...

Astrocytomas are primary human brain tumors including diffuse or anaplastic astrocytomas that develop towards secondary glioblastomas over time. However, only little is known about molecular alterations that drive this progression. We measured multi-omics profiles of patient-matched astrocytoma pairs of initial and recurrent tumors from 22 patients...

Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue level. Here, we study spatio-temporal pattern formation in a population of cells exhibiting phenotypic plasticity...

We introduce a continuous modeling approach which combines elastic response of the trabecular bone structure with the concentration of signaling molecules within the bone and a mechanism for concentration dependent local bone formation and resorption. In an abstract setting bone can be considered as a shape changing structure. For similar problems...

Deciphering organizational principles of multicellular systems is crucial for understanding key processes in biological development, regeneration, and disease dynamics.

BACKGROUND Cellular heterogeneity is a hallmark of numerous cancer types, including Glioblastoma (GBM). Cancer stem cells (CSC) have been accounted for the generation of phenotypic heterogeneity and tumor progression in GBM. Recent data, however, suggest that CSCs may not represent a stable entity and intrinsic plasticity plays a key role in tumor...

BACKGROUND Cellular heterogeneity has been well established within numerous cancer types, including malignant brain tumours. Initially, cancer stem cells (CSC) have been accounted for formation of phenotypic heterogeneity and tumor progression in glioblastoma (GBM). Recent data, however, suggest that CSCs may not represent a stable entity and intri...

The identity and unique capacity of cancer stem cells (CSC) to drive tumor growth and resistance have been challenged in brain tumors. Here we report that cells expressing CSC-associated cell membrane markers in Glioblastoma (GBM) do not represent a clonal entity defined by distinct functional properties and transcriptomic profiles, but rather a pl...

How do ordered structures like spirals cope with stochastic events? Several phenomena in chemistry and biology provide examples of excitable media and spiral pattern formation and are intrinsically stochastic. Here, we present a novel lattice-gas cellular automaton model for discrete excitable media. In this stochastic model, two discrete interacti...

The present study deals with the characterization of bone quality in a sheep model of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Sheep were sham operated (n = 7), ovariectomized (n = 6), ovariectomized and treated with deficient diet (n = 8) or ovariectomized, treated with deficient diet and glucocorticoid injections (n = 7). The focus of the study is on the mic...

The development of cancer is a multistep process in which cells increase in malignancy through progressive alterations. Such altered cells compete with wild-type cells and have to establish within a tissue in order to induce tumor formation. The range of this competition and the tumor-originating cell type which acquires the first alteration is unk...

Introduction To date there is no curative treatment available for patients with Glioblastoma (GBM). The cancer stem cell (CSC) hypothesis posits that GBMs rely on a small subpopulation of cells with stemness properties responsible for tumour progression and recurrence. Recent experimental data from GBM and other cancers however suggest that CSCs ma...

Cancer development is a multistep process in which cells increase in malignancy through progressive alterations. The early phase of this process is hardly observable which aggravates an understanding of later tumor development. We shed light on this initial phase with a cell-based stochastic model calibrated with epidemiological data from the tissu...

New technologies to generate, store and retrieve medical and research data are inducing a rapid change in clinical and translational research and health care. Systems medicine is the interdisciplinary approach wherein physicians and clinical investigators team up with experts from biology, biostatistics, informatics, mathematics and computational m...

Many diffusion processes in nature and society were found to be anomalous, in the sense of being fundamentally different from conventional Brownian motion. An important example is the migration of biological cells, which exhibits non-trivial temporal decay of velocity autocorrelation functions. This means that the corresponding dynamics is characte...

Many diffusion processes in nature and society were found to be anomalous, in the sense of being fundamentally different from conventional Brownian motion. An important example is the migration of biological cells, which exhibits non-trivial temporal decay of velocity autocorrelation functions. This means that the corresponding dynamics is characte...

During tissue invasion individual tumor cells exhibit two interconvertible migration modes, namely mesenchymal and amoeboid migration. The cellular microenvironment triggers the switch between both modes, thereby allowing adaptation to dynamic conditions. It is, however, unclear if this amoeboid-mesenchymal migration plasticity contributes to a mor...

Adult gliomas are aggressive brain tumours associated with low patient sur-vival rates and limited life expectancy. The most important hallmark of thistype of tumour is its invasive behaviour, characterized by a markedly pheno-typic plasticity, infiltrative tumour morphologies and the ability of malignantprogression from low- to high-grade tumour t...

Cellular automata (CA) are discrete time, space, and state models which are extensively used for modeling biological phenomena. CA are “on-lattice” models with low computational demands. In particular, lattice-gas cellular automata (LGCA) have been introduced as models of single and collective cell migration. The interaction rule dictates the behav...

Tumor cells—even if nonauxotrophic—are often highly sensitive to arginine deficiency. We hypothesized that arginine deprivation therapy (ADT) if combined with irradiation could be a new treatment strategy for glioblastoma (GBM) patients because systemic ADT is independent of local penetration and diffusion limitations. A proof-of-principle in vitro...

Background: Cancer cell invasion, dissemination, and metastasis have been linked to an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of individual tumour cells. During EMT, adhesion molecules like E-cadherin are downregulated and the decrease of cell-cell adhesion allows tumour cells to dissociate from the primary tumour mass. This complex process depen...

Many normal and cancerous cell lines exhibit a stable composition of cells in distinct states which can, e.g., be defined on the basis of cell surface markers. There is evidence that such an equilibrium is associated with stochastic transitions between distinct states. Quantifying these transitions has the potential to better understand cell lineag...

Additional file 1 (pdf)—Vignette: A quick guide to CellTrans. A comprehensive example demonstrating how CellTrans can be used. Additional file 2 (zip)—Cell state proportion matrices of the case studies. Additional file containing text files with cell state proportion matrices of the introduced case studies. These data can directly be used for the a...