Rationally engineered advances in cancer research

The physical and engineering sciences have much to offer in understanding, diagnosing, and even treating cancer. Microfluidics, imaging, materials, and diverse measurement devices are all helping to shift paradigms of tumorigenesis and dissemination. Using materials and micro-probes of elasticity, for example, epithelia have been shown to transform into mesenchymal cells when the elasticity of adjacent tissue increases. Approaches common in engineering science enable such discoveries, and further application of such tools and principles will likely improve existing cancer models in vivo and also create better models for high throughput analyses in vitro. As profiled in this special topic issue composed of more than a dozen manuscripts, opportunities abound for the creativity and analytics of engineering and the physical sciences to make advances in and against cancer.

[1]  P. Friedl,et al.  Collective cell migration: guidance principles and hierarchies. , 2015, Trends in cell biology.

[2]  Kayla J. Wolf,et al.  A 3D topographical model of parenchymal infiltration and perivascular invasion in glioblastoma. , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[3]  Cynthia A. Reinhart-King,et al.  Clinical doses of radiation reduce collagen matrix stiffness , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[4]  Cynthia A. Reinhart-King,et al.  Tensional homeostasis and the malignant phenotype. , 2005, Cancer cell.

[5]  K. Tanner.  Perspective: The role of mechanobiology in the etiology of brain metastasis , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[6]  Stephen Lenzini,et al.  Perspective: Biophysical regulation of cancerous and normal blood cell lineages in hematopoietic malignancies , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[7]  Andrea J. Liu,et al.  DNA Damage Follows Repair Factor Depletion and Portends Genome Variation in Cancer Cells after Pore Migration , 2017, Current Biology.

[8]  Alison Stopeck,et al.  Circulating tumor cells, disease progression, and survival in metastatic breast cancer. , 2004, The New England journal of medicine.

[9]  Albert C. Chen,et al.  Matrix stiffness drives Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and tumour metastasis through a TWIST1-G3BP2 mechanotransduction pathway , 2015, Nature Cell Biology.

[10]  Mikala Egeblad,et al.  Matrix Crosslinking Forces Tumor Progression by Enhancing Integrin Signaling , 2009, Cell.

[11]  Stefan Schinkinger,et al.  Optical deformability as an inherent cell marker for testing malignant transformation and metastatic competence. , 2005, Biophysical journal.

[12]  V. Weaver,et al.  The extracellular matrix modulates the hallmarks of cancer , 2014, EMBO reports.

[13]  Orly Alter,et al.  Mathematically universal and biologically consistent astrocytoma genotype encodes for transformation and predicts survival phenotype , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[14]  Sean X. Sun,et al.  Epithelial vertex models with active biochemical regulation of contractility can explain organized collective cell motility , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[15]  D. Radisky,et al.  Mechanisms of Disease: epithelial–mesenchymal transition—does cellular plasticity fuel neoplastic progression? , 2008, Nature Clinical Practice Oncology.

[16]  Caroline Schuster,et al.  Multi-sample deformability cytometry of cancer cells , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[17]  Bojana Gligorijevic,et al.  Contact guidance is cell cycle-dependent , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[18]  Dino Di Carlo,et al.  Automated cellular sample preparation using a Centrifuge-on-a-Chip. , 2011, Lab on a chip.

[19]  J. Munson,et al.  Interstitial fluid flow in cancer: implications for disease progression and treatment , 2014, Cancer management and research.

[20]  Samy Lamouille,et al.  Molecular mechanisms of epithelial–mesenchymal transition , 2014, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

[21]  Scott T. Acton,et al.  MRI analysis to map interstitial flow in the brain tumor microenvironment , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[22]  C. P. Winlove,et al.  Effects of ionizing radiation on extracellular matrix , 2006 .

[23]  G. Mehta,et al.  Review: Mechanotransduction in ovarian cancer: Shearing into the unknown , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[24]  F. Noubissi,et al.  Breast tumor cell hybrids form spontaneously in vivo and contribute to breast tumor metastases , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[25]  Darian S. James,et al.  The extracellular matrix of ovarian cortical inclusion cysts modulates invasion of fallopian tube epithelial cells , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[26]  Yo Sup Moon,et al.  Quantitative Diagnosis of Malignant Pleural Effusions by Single-Cell Mechanophenotyping , 2013, Science Translational Medicine.

[27]  Jan Lammerding,et al.  Nuclear envelope rupture and repair during cancer cell migration , 2016, Science.

[28]  C. Pozrikidis,et al.  A Model of Fluid Flow in Solid Tumors , 2003, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[29]  U. Keyser,et al.  Real-time deformability cytometry: on-the-fly cell mechanical phenotyping , 2015, Nature Methods.

[30]  D. Lauffenburger,et al.  Migration of tumor cells in 3D matrices is governed by matrix stiffness along with cell-matrix adhesion and proteolysis. , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[32]  Lap Man Lee,et al.  The effect of mechanosensitive channel MscL expression in cancer cells on 3D confined migration , 2018, APL bioengineering.

[33]  A. Patrinos,et al.  The Human Genome Project: view from the Department of Energy. , 1997, Journal of the American Medical Women's Association.

[34]  Laura J. Suggs,et al.  Extracellular Matrix Stiffening Induces a Malignant Phenotypic Transition in Breast Epithelial Cells , 2016, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.

[35]  Jin Woong Kim,et al.  The physical origins of transit time measurements for rapid, single cell mechanotyping. , 2016, Lab on a chip.