Generation of anisotropic strain dysregulates wild-type cell division at the interface between host and oncogenic tissue.

Epithelial tissues are highly sensitive to anisotropies in mechanical force, with cells altering fundamental behaviors, such as cell adhesion, migration, and cell division. It is well known that, in the later stages of carcinoma (epithelial cancer), the presence of tumors alters the mechanical properties of a host tissue and that these changes contribute to disease progression. However, in the earliest stages of carcinoma, when a clonal cluster of oncogene-expressing cells first establishes in the epithelium, the extent to which mechanical changes alter cell behavior in the tissue as a whole remains unclear.

Meeting report - Dynamic Cell III.

Dynamic Cell III, a meeting jointly organized by the British Society of Cell Biology (BSCB) and the Biochemical Society, took place at the Manchester Conference Centre, Manchester, UK in March 2018. It brought together a diverse group of scientists from around the world, all with a shared interest in understanding how dynamic functions of the cell are fulfilled. A particular focus was the regulation of the cytoskeleton: in cell division, cell migration and cell-cell interactions.

MYC Is a Crucial Mediator of TGFβ-Induced Invasion in Basal Breast Cancer.

Basal subtype breast cancers have a particularly poor prognosis, with high invasiveness and resistance to most targeted therapies. TGFβ and MYC drive central features of basal breast cancer: TGFβ is an autocrine and paracrine signaling factor that drives cell invasion and metastasis, and MYC is a central regulator of cellular proliferation that is upregulated in many cancer types. We show here that genetic or pharmacologic inhibition of MYC in MCF10A basal breast cells results in increased sensitivity to TGFβ-stimulated invasion and metastasis and also show that this signaling loop is dependent on activation of SRC.