AUTHOR=Panzetta Valeria , Musella Ida , Fusco Sabato , Netti Paolo A. 

TITLE=ECM Mechanoregulation in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/bioengineering-and-biotechnology/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2022.797900

DOI=10.3389/fbioe.2022.797900

ISSN=2296-4185

ABSTRACT=Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a relatively rare, but devastating tumor, because of the difficulties in providing early diagnosis and effective treatments with conventional chemo- and radio- therapies. Patients present, usually, pleural effusions which can be used for diagnostic purposes by cytological analysis. This effusion cytology may take weeks or months to establish and has a limited sensitivity (30-60%). Then, it is becoming increasingly urgent to develop alternative investigative methods to support the diagnosis of mesothelioma at early stage when this cancer can be treated successfully. To this purpose, mechanobiology is providing novel perspectives into the study of tumor onset and progression and new diagnostic tools for the mechanical characterization of tumor tissues. Here, we report a mechanical and biophysical characterization of malignant pleural mesothelioma cells as additional support to the diagnosis of pleural effusions. In particular, we examined a normal mesothelial cell line (MET5a) and two epithelioid mesothelioma cell lines (REN and MPP89), investigating how malignant transformation can influences cellular function like proliferation, cell migration and cell spreading area with respect to the normal ones. These alterations were also correlated with variation in cytoskeletal mechanical properties, in turn, measured on substrates mimicking the stiffness of patho-physiological ECM.