{"corr_author":"1","external_id":{"pmid":["42715298"]},"date_published":"2026-09-09T00:00:00Z","tmp":{"image":"/images/cc_by.png","short":"CC BY (4.0)","legal_code_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0)"},"researchdata_availability":"yes","acknowledgement":"We thank all the members of the Hannezo and Sixt groups for fruitful discussions and t. Kato for advice on the experimental setup. We are also thankful for support from the Scientific Service Units (SSU) of IST Austria through resources provided by the imaging and Optics Facility (iOF) and the Lab Support Facility (lSF). We used chatGPt (GPt- 5,OpenAi, 2025) to make minor grammatical and stylistic revisions to the original manuscript, which was written by us. We carefully reviewed and verified all changes and are solely responsible for all scientific content, data, interpretation, and conclusions. Funding: Z.D. has received funding from the Doctoral Programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW):grant agreement 26360. this work was supported by the European Research council (grant ERC- SyG 101071793 to M.S.). E.S. and R.P.J. are supported by the Francis Crick Institute, which receives its core funding from cancer Research UK (cc2040), the UK Medical Research council(cc2040), and the Wellcome trust (cc2040) and the European Research council (ERC Advanced Grant cAn_ORGAniSe, grant agreement number 101019366).","has_accepted_license":"1","file_date_updated":"2026-10-06T11:30:48Z","citation":{"mla":"Dunajova, Zuzana, et al. “Substrate Heterogeneity Promotes Cancer Cell Dissemination through Interface Roughening.” <i>Science Advances</i>, vol. 12, no. 37, eaed0587, AAAS, 2026, doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587\">10.1126/sciadv.aed0587</a>.","apa":"Dunajova, Z., Tasciyan, S., Majek, J., Merrin, J., Jenkins, R. P., Sahai, E., … Hannezo, E. B. (2026). Substrate heterogeneity promotes cancer cell dissemination through interface roughening. <i>Science Advances</i>. AAAS. <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587\">https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587</a>","short":"Z. Dunajova, S. Tasciyan, J. Majek, J. Merrin, R.P. Jenkins, E. Sahai, M.K. Sixt, E.B. Hannezo, Science Advances 12 (2026).","ista":"Dunajova Z, Tasciyan S, Majek J, Merrin J, Jenkins RP, Sahai E, Sixt MK, Hannezo EB. 2026. Substrate heterogeneity promotes cancer cell dissemination through interface roughening. Science Advances. 12(37), eaed0587.","chicago":"Dunajova, Zuzana, Saren Tasciyan, Juraj Majek, Jack Merrin, Robert P. Jenkins, Erik Sahai, Michael K Sixt, and Edouard B Hannezo. “Substrate Heterogeneity Promotes Cancer Cell Dissemination through Interface Roughening.” <i>Science Advances</i>. AAAS, 2026. <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587\">https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587</a>.","ama":"Dunajova Z, Tasciyan S, Majek J, et al. Substrate heterogeneity promotes cancer cell dissemination through interface roughening. <i>Science Advances</i>. 2026;12(37). doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587\">10.1126/sciadv.aed0587</a>","ieee":"Z. Dunajova <i>et al.</i>, “Substrate heterogeneity promotes cancer cell dissemination through interface roughening,” <i>Science Advances</i>, vol. 12, no. 37. AAAS, 2026."},"das_tickbox":"1","dataavailabilitystatement":" All data and code needed to evaluate and reproduce the results in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials and the associated data and code repositories. Source data underlying all figures and supplementary figures have been deposited in a Zenodo repository (DOi: 10.5281/zenodo.21718217) and will be made publicly available upon publication. custom simulation and analysis codes used in this study are available at https://codeocean.com/capsule/1237446/tree. no unique biological materials were generated in this study. Microfluidic mask designs generated for this work are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.","scopus_import":"1","publication":"Science Advances","quality_controlled":"1","related_material":{"record":[{"relation":"earlier_version","status":"public","id":"21427"}]},"author":[{"last_name":"Dunajova","first_name":"Zuzana","id":"4B39F286-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","full_name":"Dunajova, Zuzana"},{"last_name":"Tasciyan","orcid":"0000-0003-1671-393X","full_name":"Tasciyan, Saren","id":"4323B49C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","first_name":"Saren"},{"full_name":"Majek, Juraj","id":"3e6d9473-f38e-11ec-8ae0-c4e05a8aa9e1","first_name":"Juraj","last_name":"Majek"},{"last_name":"Merrin","first_name":"Jack","id":"4515C308-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","orcid":"0000-0001-5145-4609","full_name":"Merrin, Jack"},{"last_name":"Jenkins","full_name":"Jenkins, Robert P.","first_name":"Robert P."},{"first_name":"Erik","full_name":"Sahai, Erik","last_name":"Sahai"},{"id":"41E9FBEA-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","full_name":"Sixt, Michael K","orcid":"0000-0002-6620-9179","first_name":"Michael K","last_name":"Sixt"},{"last_name":"Hannezo","first_name":"Edouard B","id":"3A9DB764-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","full_name":"Hannezo, Edouard B","orcid":"0000-0001-6005-1561"}],"status":"public","ddc":["570"],"month":"09","issue":"37","article_type":"original","day":"09","user_id":"2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","doi":"10.1126/sciadv.aed0587","supplementarymaterial":"no","type":"journal_article","PlanS_conform":"1","publisher":"AAAS","language":[{"iso":"eng"}],"year":"2026","project":[{"grant_number":"26360","name":"Motile active matter models of migrating cells and chiral filaments","_id":"34d75525-11ca-11ed-8bc3-89b6307fee9d"},{"grant_number":"101071793","name":"Pushing from within: Control of cell shape, integrity and motility by cytoskeletal pushing forces","_id":"bd91e723-d553-11ed-ba76-fe7eeb2185fd"}],"abstract":[{"lang":"eng","text":"Although studies of tumor invasion have mainly emphasized the evolution of genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity, cellular behaviors also depend on the physical microenvironment. Yet, the tumor microenvironment is both complex and continuously remodeled, making it hard to rigorously test its causal influence on tumor dissemination. Here, we adopted a reductionist approach to studying tumor cell invasion in microengineered environments of tunable patterned geometries. We find that not only the presence of obstacles but more unexpectedly their spatial disorder causes a drastic shift from a collective to a single-cell mode of invasion—comparable in strength to loss of cell-cell adhesion. Combining live-imaging and perturbation experiments with minimal biophysical modeling, we demonstrate that cell dissemination results both from local geometrical constraints and a global integration of spatial disorder over time. We identify generic universality classes of invasion dynamics dependent on environmental geometry, enabling us to identify quantitative physical principles for tumor dissemination."}],"article_number":"eaed0587","volume":12,"OA_type":"gold","intvolume":"        12","date_updated":"2026-10-06T11:36:34Z","acknowledged_ssus":[{"_id":"Bio"},{"_id":"LifeSc"}],"file":[{"file_size":11691064,"date_created":"2026-10-06T11:30:48Z","success":1,"date_updated":"2026-10-06T11:30:48Z","relation":"main_file","file_name":"2026_ScienceAdv_Dunajova.pdf","access_level":"open_access","creator":"dernst","file_id":"23062","content_type":"application/pdf","checksum":"79f419b659650a39b3dfa58c782690a8"}],"department":[{"_id":"EdHa"},{"_id":"MiSi"},{"_id":"GradSch"},{"_id":"AnSa"},{"_id":"NanoFab"}],"_id":"22963","title":"Substrate heterogeneity promotes cancer cell dissemination through interface roughening","publication_identifier":{"eissn":["2375-2548"]},"date_created":"2026-09-20T22:01:48Z","fulldoi":"https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed0587","pmid":1,"oa_version":"Published Version","OA_place":"publisher","publication_status":"published","article_processing_charge":"Yes","oa":1,"DOAJ_listed":"1"}