CAREER Awardee to Study How Cells Move Together Through the Body

It's well established that cancer cells will often migrate from one part of the body to another. Cancer originating in the breast can migrate to the bones, brain or liver over time, with fatal consequences. Cells involved in wound healing, tissue formation and immune response also have the capacity to migrate through the body to keep it healthy.

In many biological processes, cells often move as coordinated groups, a process known as collective cell migration. This group movement can be more efficient than migration by isolated single cells, especially in complex tissue environments. Single cells migrating on their own struggle to survive, while collective groups of cells are more likely to succeed in reaching and colonizing another region of the body, for good or for ill.

Less well understood is how these collective groups of cells coordinate their movement through tissues. They must both transmit forces to one another and use energy to sustain motion, inviting a range of questions: Do they push? Do they pull? Do some cells lead and others follow? What are the energy requirements to sustain this march through surrounding tissues?

These are some of the questions Jian Zhang, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the U of A, hopes to answer. The National Science Foundation has awarded him $504,665 to pursue this work as part of the Faculty Early Career Development Program, also known as a CAREER award.

"My lab will focus on how two factors work together during collective cell migration: the mechanical forces cells exert on one another and the energy cells need to sustain movement," Zhang explained. "By connecting these force and energy aspects of cell behavior, the project aims to better understand how groups of cells move, organize and respond to their physical surroundings in tissue-like environments."

To accomplish this, Zhang will use a recently developed method for mapping intercellular stresses in three-dimensional cell collectives, together with bioenergetic measurements, engineered tissue models and deep learning-based image analysis, to determine how force patterns and energy constraints shape coordinated movements of cells.

"We create small artificial tumor models by growing cancer cells into three-dimensional aggregates and placing them in a soft scaffold that mimics aspects of a tumor's surrounding natural tissue environment," Zhang explained. "These models provide a controlled way to study collective cell migration: how groups of cells move through the scaffold, how they mechanically interact with one another and how much energy they use during migration."

Zhang is a graduated research project leader with the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center (AIMRC), and this CAREER project will draw on resources from AIMRC's Imaging, Bioenergetics and Data Science cores for imaging, bioenergetic measurements and data analysis. In the fall of 2025, Zhang also received a $1.8 million award from the National Institutes of Health to support his broader research program on the mechanobiology of multicellular morphogenesis.

The knowledge and tools developed through this research project will provide a foundation for future studies of tissue growth, repair and diseases such as cancer. The project will also contribute to broader national interests in biotechnology by advancing methods to study coordinated cell behavior in realistic tissue environments and help advance national health.

The research will be closely integrated with education and outreach, using the same toolset and experimental framework to support research training, hands-on course activities, outreach programs and practical workshops for researchers. The project will advance fundamental work in biomechanics and mechanobiology by establishing a force-energy framework for collective migration in tissues, while making the new enabling tools more broadly accessible.

CAREER awards are the NSF's most prestigious awards for early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in their department or organization. The awards are for five years and include teaching and public outreach components.