# Epithelial Cell Migration: Model selection for mechanistic model development

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · 2021 · $49,240

## Abstract

Project Summary
The collective migration of cells is a central biological process for multicellular organisms.
Collective migration of epithelial sheets to close the gap during wound healing is an excellent
illustration of this phenomenon. Inappropriate migratory movements can result in impaired wound
healing, as seen in chronic wounds and diabetic foot ulcers. While substantial research has been
devoted to its study, we still lack a foundational understanding of what drives groups of cells to
move coherently as curative therapies are still not available for unhealable chronic wounds. Bortz,
Liu, and Dukic groups are working together to develop a model selection-based approach to
reveal driving mechanisms that control collective cell migration. Thus the long-term mathematical
goal is to develop and apply a computationally efficient and rigorously well-posed model selection
methodology for spatio-temporal biological phenomena modeled by differential equations.
Toward this end, we will pursue a synergistic experimental, mathematical, and statistical approach
to develop feasible candidate models, design and carry out validating experiments, and select the
best models to infer the dominant driving mechanisms. While we made a lot of progress in
developing mathematical frameworks for modeling various cell migratory behaviors, a bottleneck
for unlocking the potentials of our new approach is the limited throughput of cell migration assays
due to the manual experiment setup, which is tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, pipetting
by hand is error-prone and induces avoidable variability between experiments. ASSIST PLUS
from Integra Biosciences is designed for semi-automated liquid handling for cell culture studies
and drug treatments. Acquisition of this robotic system will enable us to conduct numerous
experiments in a more robustly and accelerate our research project.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10389279
- **Project number:** 3R01GM126559-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
- **Principal Investigator:** David Bortz
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $49,240
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2017-07-10 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10389279

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10389279, Epithelial Cell Migration: Model selection for mechanistic model development (3R01GM126559-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-07-19 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10389279. Licensed CC0.

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