Travelling under pressure-hypoxia and shear stress in the metastatic journey

Cancer cell invasion, intravasation and survival in the bloodstream are early steps of the metastatic process, pivotal to enabling the spread of cancer to distant tissues. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) represent a highly selected subpopulation of cancer cells that tamed these critical steps, and a better understanding of their biology and driving molecular principles may facilitate the development of novel tools to prevent metastasis. Here, we describe key research advances in this field, aiming at describing early metastasis-related processes such as collective invasion, shedding, and survival of CTCs in the bloodstream, paying particular attention to microenvironmental factors like hypoxia and mechanical stress, considered as important influencers of the metastatic journey.ISSN:1573-7276ISSN:0262-089

Magnetically Controlled Cyclic Microscale Deformation of In Vitro Cancer Invasion Models

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Prof. Salvador Pané, Siyu Deng, Fabian Landers and Valentin Gantenbein for technical support regarding the μRod fabrication and access to their electroplating setup. They gratefully acknowledge the Functional Genomics Center Zurich (FGCZ) of University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, and in particular Lennart Opitz, for assistance with Genomics analyses. They also thank Dr. Claire Schirmer for support, Dr. Cameron Forbrigger for proof reading, and the staff of the FIRST clean room and of the Physics workshop at ETH Zurich for support.Mechanical cues play an important role in the metastatic cascade of cancer. Three-dimensional (3D) tissue matrices with tunable stiffness have been extensively used as model systems of the tumor microenvironment...</jats:p