Engineers put the squeeze on cancer cells – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

ATR is an enzyme that helps preserve the integrity of the genome. When it does not operate effectively it can guide to ailments this sort of as cancer, neurological conditions and heart condition. But new exploration exhibits that ATR also has an effect on the elasticity of cells.

‘These dual functions of ATR, on the genome and on mobile elasticity, have pretty critical variances,’ claims Marco Foiani, scientific director of IFOM, a cancer exploration institute in Milan, Italy. ‘While the to start with is protecting in direction of avoiding tumours, the second may be negative – we suspect that ATR may be required for the metastasis of cancer cells.’

With assist from the EU-funded MECHANOCHECK task, Foiani employed postdoctoral researcher Qingsen Li from Singapore to use his mechanical engineering expertise to establish how ATR has an effect on mobile elasticity.

Exploding cells

Li applied an atomic-power microscope to measure the stiffness of cells and their nuclei. ‘ATR defective cells have been uncovered to be two times as delicate as usual cells,’ Li claims. ‘This acquiring authorized us to exhibit that ATR influences interstitial migration and metastasis.’

In a groundbreaking series of experiments, Li built two gadgets: one particular to extend cells and the other to compress them. He verified that cells missing in ATR have been softer and significantly less resilient than usual cells and thus significantly less probable to endure getting squeezed or stretched.

‘To even more validate the discovery, we applied microfabricated channels to mimic a blood capillary and investigated how cells migrate as a result of these constrictions,’ Li describes. He uncovered that cells with out ATR have been fatally broken. ‘They practically explode,’ claims Foiani. ‘And that’s since of a lack of stiffness. It is amazing to look at this.’

Foiani speculates that this may well make clear why medications identified to inhibit the purpose of ATR can be powerful in chemotherapy. The softer, weaker cancer cells are significantly less equipped to press as a result of other tissues to kind secondary tumours.

He also thinks the conclusions may well be appropriate to Seckel syndrome, a uncommon and lethal condition where the anxious procedure does not grow effectively, possibly owing to a lack of ATR which weakens the producing nerve cells.

The crew are now applying Li’s gadgets to examine the function of ATR in heart muscle, where the cells are frequently stretching and calming, in the hope of improved being familiar with some sorts of heart condition.

Mechanomedicine patents

The task finished in March 2018 and Li now leads his have mechanomedicine know-how team at IFOM. ‘IFOM supplied the best coaching ecosystem to pursue my proposed task and fortify my inventive capacity in the creation and implementation of revolutionary technologies,’ he claims.

He is functioning with TTFactor, a know-how transfer company established up by IFOM and two other Italian institutions to commercialise improvements in cancer exploration. The mobile-stretching system has presently been patented and a patent for the mobile-compression system has been filed.

Li’s operate was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Particular person Fellowship, a scheme Foiani describes as ‘fantastic’. ‘To be equipped to appeal to a mechanical engineer to operate on biomedical troubles is so critical for us,’ he claims. ‘Qingsen not only changed my lab, he changed the whole institute!

‘In IFOM, we now have a programme in collaboration with the Mechanobiology Institute in Singapore. So, we started off from biophysics, then we went to mechanobiology and now it’s mechanomedicine which is our direction now.’