  After injury, if regeneration can be observed in hydra, planaria and some
vertebrates, regeneration is rare in mammals and particularly in humans. In
this paper, we investigate the mechanisms by which biological tissues recover
after injury. We explore this question on adipose tissue, using the
mathematical framework recently developed in Peurichard et al, J. Theoret.
Biol. 429 (2017), pp. 61-81. Our assumption is that simple mechanical cues
between the Extra-Cellular Matrix (ECM) and differentiated cells can explain
adipose tissue morphogenesis and that regeneration requires after injury the
same mechanisms. We validate this hypothesis by means of a two-dimensional
Individual Based Model (IBM) of interacting adipocytes and ECM fiber elements.
The model successfully generates regeneration or scar formation as functions of
few key parameters, and seems to indicate that the fate of injury outcome could
be mainly due to ECM rigidity.
