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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 10: Poster III

BP 10.21: Poster

Montag, 16. März 2020, 17:30–19:30, P2/3OG

Why do rigid tumors contain soft cancer cells? — •Thomas Fuhs¹, Franziska Wetzel¹, Anatol W. Fritsch¹, Dapeng Bi², Roland Stange¹, Steve Pawlizak¹, Tobias R. Kiesling¹, Erik Morawetz¹, Steffen Grosser¹, Frank Sauer¹, Jürgen Lippoldt¹, Fred Renner¹, Sabrina Friebe¹, Mareike Zink¹, Bahriye Aktas³, Lars-Christian Horn³, Klaus Bendrat⁴, Axel Niendorf⁴, Michael Höckel³, and Josef A. Käs¹ — ¹Leipzig University, Germany — ²Northeastern University, Boston, USA — ³University Hospital Leipzig, Germany — ⁴Pathology Hamburg-West, Germany

Palpatation used since acient times, utilizes that solid tumors are stiffer than surrounding tissue. However, cancer cell lines are softer, which facilitates invasion. This paradox raises several questions: Does softness emerge from adaptation to mechanical and chemical cues in the external microenvironment? Or are soft cells already present inside a rigid primary tumor? We investigate primary samples from patients with mammary and cervical carcinomas on multiple length scales from tissue level down to single cells. We show that primary tumors a highly heterogeneous in their mechanical properties on the tissue level as well as cells do exhibit a broad distribution of rigidities, with a higher fraction of softer and more elongated cells compared to normal tissue. Mechanical modelling based on patient data reveals that tumors remain solid containing a significant fraction of very soft cells. Moreover, it predicts that in such tissues, softer cells spontaneously self-organize into multicellular streams, which we observe experimentally.