Mechanical stress-induced cell death in breast cancer cells

Satomi Takao; Minoru Taya; Cerwyn Chiew

doi:10.1242/bio.043133

Mechanical stress-induced cell death in breast cancer cells

Biol Open. 2019 Aug 16;8(8):bio043133. doi: 10.1242/bio.043133.

Authors

Satomi Takao¹, Minoru Taya², Cerwyn Chiew¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA tayam@uw.edu.

Abstract

Providing an external mechanical stress to cancer cells seems to be an effective approach to treat cancer locally. Numbers of reports on cancer cell death subjected to mechanical stress loading are increasing, but they are more focused on apoptosis. Inducing necrosis is also important in attracting more immune cells to the cancer site via the release of danger-associated molecular patterns from cancer cells. Here we applied dynamic compression to breast cancer cells with a low frequency (0.1-30 Hz) and for a short duration (30-300 s) and they resulted in a mixed mode of apoptosis and necrosis dominant with necrotic cell death, which we call mechanical stress-induced cell death (MSICD). The necrotic cell damage of mechanically treated breast cancer cells increased in a force-dependent and time-dependent manner while a trend of frequency-independent MSICD was observed.

Keywords: Apoptosis; Breast cancer cells; Mechanical stress-induced cell death (MSICD); Necrosis; Oscillating compression stress.