Hydraulic and electric control of cell spheroids

In addition to generating forces and reacting to mechanical cues, tissues are capable to actively pump fluid and create electric current. In this talk, we will discuss how a hydraulic or electrical perturbation, imposed for instance by a drain of micrometric diameter, can be used to perturb tissue growth. We address this issue in a continuum description of a spherical cell assembly that includes the mechanical, electrical and hydraulic properties of the tissue. This approach allows us to discuss and quantify the effect of electrohydraulic perturbations on the long-time states of the tissue. We highlight that a sufficiently strong external flow or electric current can drive a proliferating spheroid to decay. We propose that this could have applications in medicine.