The effects of solid stress compression on mechano-sensitive targets and its role in breast cancer malignancy

Abstract

As a tumour mass rapidly grows and expands, surrounding host tissues exert an applied solid stress on the tumour. Studies have found that solid stress compression on cancer cells favour an invasive and metastatic phenotype through the induction of molecular signalling cascade, genotypic and phenotypic changes. This is highly relevant in the progression and malignancy of breast cancer cells. However, there is currently very limited data on the effects of solid stress compression on the mechanotransduction of signalling cascades, particularly in breast cancer cells. In this study, a 2D in vitro compression was set up to investigate the effect of increasing solid stress compression on activation of PI3K/Akt pathway and its downstream target GSK-3β. The findings indicated that phosphorylation of GSK-3β increased along with solid stress compression increase, but decreased at the highest relative compressive unit investigated, 1546 Pa (2.0 RCU).