Modelling the motion of clusters of cells in a viscous fluid using the boundary integral method

•This paper uses the boundary integral method to model the motion of a cell through a viscous fluid.•The model can be used to simulate chemotaxis.•The results of the calculations are compared to some experimental data. In experiments clusters of cells are often observed to move in response to a chemical signal which is present in the fluid surrounding the cells. This process is known as chemotaxis. This paper presents a method for modelling the motion of clusters of cells moving through a viscous fluid in response to a known chemical signal using a boundary integral formulation of the governing equations rather than the more usual differential equation formulation. The numerical results presented in this paper show that the boundary integral method can be used to simulate the motion of cell clusters through the fluid. The results of the simulations are compared to some experimental observations of cell and cluster motion.