A preliminary study of endothelial cell migration during angiogenesis using a meshless method approach

Abstract

Angiogenesis, the development of new blood capillaries, is crucial for the wound healing process. This biological process allows the proper blood supply to the tissue, essential for cell proliferation and viability. Several biological factors modulate angiogenesis, however the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is the main one. Given the complexity of angiogenesis, in the last years, computational modelling aroused the interest of scientists since it allows to model this process with different, more economic and faster methodologies, comparatively to experimental approaches. In this work, a mathematical model motivated by the analysis of the effect of VEGF diffusion gradient in endothelial cell migration is presented. This is the process that allows capillary formation and it is essential for angiogenesis. The proposed mathematical model is combined with the Radial Point Interpolation Method, being the area discretized considering an unorganized nodal cloud and a background mesh of integration points, without predefined relations. The nodal connectivity was achieved using the "influence-domain" approach. The interpolation functions were constructed using the Radial Point Interpolators techniques. This method combines a radial basis functions with a polynomial functions to obtain the approximation. This preliminary work does not account for the whole complexity of cell and tissue biology, and numerical results are presented for an idealised two-dimensional setting. Nevertheless, the developed RPIM software is a valid numerical tool that can be adjusted to biological problems and may also be able to complement the biological and medical subjects.