Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 15: Cell Mechanics I
BP 15.2: Vortrag
Dienstag, 18. März 2025, 12:15–12:30, H44
Prostate cancer associated fibroblasts have distinct morpho-mechanical features that predict patient outcome — Antje Garside1, Angela Jacobi1, Shivakumar Keerthikumar2,3, Michelle Richards2, Birunthi Niranjan2, Gail Risbridger2,3, Mitchell Lawrence2,3, and •Anna Taubenberger1 — 1BIOTEC, TUD, Dresden, Germany. — 2Monash University, Victoria, Australia — 3Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
Prostate cancer is among the most commonly diagnosed types of cancer. A key role in tumor progression has been attributed to the tumor stroma including its cellular components such as cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs). Here we present a comprehensive study where we quantitatively assessed the morpho-mechanical properties of patient-derived prostatic CAFs and matched normal prostatic fibroblasts from a cohort of 35 patients, through combination of cell morphometric analysis and high-throughput mechanical probing of single cells by real-time deformability cytometry. CAFs comprised distinct morpho-mechanical features compared to their normal counterparts, including nuclear size and shape, cytoskeletal arrangement, cellular volumes and elastic properties. A combined score of these mechanical and morphological parameters distinguished patients with shorter and longer time to clinical relapse. Morpho-mechanical changes across patients were correlated with transcriptomic alterations in cellular components and pathways. In summary, our results suggest that high-throughput assessments of the biophysical properties of CAFs can serve as a complementary tool to predict patient outcome.
Keywords: cell mechanics; Cancer mechanobiology; high-throughput phenotyping; prostate cancer; Cancer diagnostics