PAK in Pancreatic Cancer-Associated Vasculature: Implications for Therapeutic Response.

Angiogenesis has been associated with numbers of solid tumours. Anti-angiogenesis drugs starve tumours of nutrients and oxygen but also make it difficult for a chemo reagent to distribute into a tumour, leading to aggressive tumour growth. Anti-angiogenesis drugs do not appear to improve the overall survival rate of pancreatic cancer.

The functional cross talk between cancer cells and cancer associated fibroblasts from a cancer mechanics perspective.

The function of biological tissues in health and disease is regulated at cellular level and is highly influenced by the physical microenvironment, through the interaction of forces between cells and ECM, which are perceived through mechanosensing pathways. In cancer, both chemical and physical signaling cascades and their interactions are involved during cell-cell and cell-ECM communications to meet requirements of tumor growth. Among stroma cells, cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play key role in tumor growth and pave the way for cancer cells to initiate metastasis and invasion to other tissues, and without recruitment of CAFs, the process of cancer invasion is dysfunctional.

An AFM-Based Nanomechanical Study of Ovarian Tissues with Pathological Conditions.

Background: Different diseases affect both mechanical and chemical features of the involved tissue, enhancing the symptoms.

Methods: In this study, using atomic force microscopy, we mechanically characterized human ovarian tissues with four distinct pathological conditions: mucinous, serous, and mature teratoma tumors, and non-tumorous endometriosis. Mechanical elasticity profiles were quantified and the resultant data were categorized using K-means clustering method, as well as fuzzy C-means, to evaluate elastic moduli of cellular and non-cellular parts of diseased tissues and compare them among four disease conditions.

Behavioral remodeling of normal and cancerous epithelial cell lines with differing invasion potential induced by substrate elastic modulus.

The micro-environment of cancer cells in the body is mechanically stiffer than that of normal cells. We cultured three breast cell lines of MCF10A-normal, MCF7-noninvasive, and MDA-MB-231-invasive on PDMS substrates with different elastic moduli and different cellular features were examined.Effects of substrate stiffness on cell behavior were evident among all cell lines.

Quantification of effects of cancer on elastic properties of breast tissue by Atomic Force Microscopy.

Different behaviors of cells such as growth, differentiation and apoptosis widely differ in case of diseases. The mechanical properties of cells and tissues can be used as a clue for diagnosis of pathological conditions. Here, we implemented Atomic Force Microscopy to evaluate the extent of alteration in mechanical stiffness of tissue layers from patients affected by breast cancer and investigated how data can be categorized based on pathological observations.