RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Stochastic model of contact inhibition and the proliferation of melanoma in situ JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 110007 DO 10.1101/110007 A1 Mauro Cesar Cafundó de Morais A1 Izabella Stuhl A1 Alan Utsuni Sabino A1 Willian Wagner Lautenschlager A1 Alexandre Sarmento Queiroga A1 Tharcisio Citrangulo Tortelli, Jr. A1 Roger Chammas A1 Yuri Suhov A1 Alexandre Ferreira Ramos YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/20/110007.abstract AB Contact inhibition is a central feature orchestrating cell proliferation in culture experiments with its loss being associated with malignant transformation and tumorigenesis. We performed a co-culture experiment with human metastatic melanoma cell line (SK-MEL-147) and immortalized keratinocyte cells (HaCaT). After 8 days a spatial pattern was detected, characterized by the formation of clusters of melanoma cells surrounded by keratinocytes constraining their proliferation. In addition, we observed that the proportion of melanoma cells within the total population has increased. To explain our results we propose a spatial stochastic model (following a philosophy of the Widow-Rowlinson model from Statistical Physics and Molecular Chemistry) where we consider cell proliferation, death, migration, and cell-to-cell interaction through contact inhibition. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that loss of contact inhibition is a sufficient mechanism, appropriate for an explanation of the increase on the proportion of tumor cells and generation of spatial patterns established in conducted experiments.