Tumor cell invasiveness in the initial stages of bladder cancer development - A computational study

Atomic force microscopy in disease-related studies: Exploring tissue and cell mechanics

Despite significant progress in human medicine, certain diseases remain challenging to promptly diagnose and treat. Hence, the imperative lies in the development of more exhaustive criteria and tools. Tissue and cellular mechanics exhibit distinctive traits in both normal and pathological states, suggesting that "force" represents a promising and distinctive target for disease diagnosis and treatment. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) holds great promise as a prospective clinical medical device due to its capability to concurrently assess surface morphology and mechanical characteristics of biological specimens within a physiological setting. This review presents a comprehensive examination of the operational principles of AFM and diverse mechanical models, focusing on its applications in investigating tissue and cellular mechanics associated with prevalent diseases. The findings from these studies lay a solid groundwork for potential clinical implementations of AFM. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: By examining the surface morphology and assessing tissue and cellular mechanics of biological specimens in a physiological setting, AFM shows promise as a clinical device to diagnose and treat challenging diseases.

The modeling study of the effect of morphological behaviors of extracellular matrix fibers on the dynamic interaction between tumor cells and antitumor immune response

Low response rate limits the effective application of immunotherapy, in which the interactions between tumor cells and immune cells play a significant role. The strength of regulation could be mediated by extracellular matrix (ECM) fibers, which is still insufficiently investigated. In the study, the cellular potts model was utilized to explore the role of morphological properties of ECM in tumor-immune interactions. It was observed that high-density random ECM fibers delayed the interaction between tumor cells and T cells. Moreover, the tumor-immune interactions were ECM morphology-specific. Radial ECM fibers exhibited weaker inhibitory role in the process of contact between tumor cells and T cells. This study provided the useful mechanism of tumor-immune interactions from the viewpoint of morphological effect of ECM fibers, facilitating improving the efficiency of immunotherapy.