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Cell stiffness is a biomarker of the metastatic potential of ovarian cancer cells.

ABSTRACT: The metastatic potential of cells is an important parameter in the design of optimal strategies for the personalized treatment of cancer. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), we show, consistent with previous studies conducted in other types of epithelial cancer, that ovarian cancer cells are generally softer and display lower intrinsic variability in cell stiffness than non-malignant ovarian epithelial cells. A detailed examination of highly invasive ovarian cancer cells (HEY A8) relative to their less invasive parental cells (HEY), demonstrates that deformability is also an accurate biomarker of metastatic potential. Comparative gene expression analyses indicate that the reduced stiffness of highly metastatic HEY A8 cells is associated with actin cytoskeleton remodeling and microscopic examination of actin fiber structure in these cell lines is consistent with this prediction. Our results indicate that cell stiffness may be a useful biomarker to evaluate the relative metastatic potential of ovarian and perhaps other types of cancer cells.

SUBMITTER: Xu W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3464294 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Cell stiffness is a biomarker of the metastatic potential of ovarian cancer cells.

Xu Wenwei W Mezencev Roman R Kim Byungkyu B Wang Lijuan L McDonald John J Sulchek Todd T

PloS one 20121004 10

The metastatic potential of cells is an important parameter in the design of optimal strategies for the personalized treatment of cancer. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), we show, consistent with previous studies conducted in other types of epithelial cancer, that ovarian cancer cells are generally softer and display lower intrinsic variability in cell stiffness than non-malignant ovarian epithelial cells. A detailed examination of highly invasive ovarian cancer cells (HEY A8) relative to th ...[more]

PMID: 23056368

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Project description:Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) accounts for 4% of all cancers in women and is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies. It is well established that cancer invasion and metastasis still represent the major causes of the failure of cancer treatment. Previously, we identified the mannose receptor LY75 (DEC205/CD205) gene as notably hypomethylated in high-grade (HG) serous epithelial ovarian tumors, compared to normal ovarian tissues. LY75 has been identified as a putative antigen-uptake receptor, which is expressed abundantly on dendritic cells, which are specialist antigen presenting cells to T lymphocytes for the initiation of an immune response. The implication of LY75 in EOC tumorigenesis is currently unknown. Here we show that LY75 is strongly overexpressed in HG serous EOC tumors as compared to normal ovarian tissue. Importantly, shRNA-mediated LY75 knockout in the mesenchymal EOC cells (SKOV3) led to mesenchymal to epithelial transition (MET), associated with overexpression of epithelial markers E-cadherin and EPCAM and loss of expression of mesenchymal markers Fibronectin, N-cadherin Snail1 and Twist1. In addition, LY75 suppression significantly inhibited EOC cell migration and invasion in vitro. However, LY75 knockdown led to enhanced tumor cell dissemination and significantly increased lethality in vivo, in xenograft model of advanced peritoneal EOC. Thus, our findings indicate that LY75 could play an essential role in the mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) of EOC cells and support the hypothesis that, while epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) enables the invasiveness of tumor cells, a MET-associated epithelial phenotype could be essential for their metastatic colonization. To better understand the molecular mechanisms of LY75 gene action in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we employed the Agilent Whole Human Genome microarrays, containing ~ 44,000 genes to identify global gene expression changes upon LY75 suppression in SKOV3 EOC cells. We compared the gene expression of the previously selected shRNA-mediated LY75-knockdown clones sh-S3 and sh-S6 against the corresponding control (ctrl) clone. The microarray experiments were performed in duplicates, as two hybridizations were carried out for each of the LY75-suppressing cell clone against the corresponding control, using a fluorescent dye reversal (dye-swap) technique.

Dataset Information

Cell stiffness is a biomarker of the metastatic potential of ovarian cancer cells.

Publications

Cell stiffness is a biomarker of the metastatic potential of ovarian cancer cells.

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