Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2018;1092:253-287. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-95294-9_13.
ECM stiffness is emerging as a prognostic marker of tumor aggression or potential for relapse. However, conflicting reports muddle the question of whether increasing or decreasing stiffness is associated with aggressive disease. This chapter discusses this controversy in more detail, but the fact that tumor stiffening plays a key role in cancer progression and in regulating cancer cell behaviors is clear. The impact of having in vitro biomaterial systems that could capture this stiffening during tumor evolution is very high. These cell culture platforms could help reveal the mechanistic underpinnings of this evolution, find new therapeutic targets to inhibit the cross talk between tumor development and ECM stiffening, and serve as better, more physiologically relevant platforms for drug screening.
细胞外基质（ECM）硬度正逐渐成为肿瘤侵袭性或复发潜能的预后标志物。然而，相互矛盾的报告使得硬度增加或降低与侵袭性疾病相关这一问题变得模糊不清。本章更详细地讨论了这一争议，但肿瘤硬度在癌症进展和调节癌细胞行为中起着关键作用这一事实是明确的。拥有能够在肿瘤进化过程中捕捉到这种硬度变化的体外生物材料系统的影响是非常高的。这些细胞培养平台可以帮助揭示这种进化的机制基础，找到抑制肿瘤发展和 ECM 硬度变化之间串扰的新治疗靶点，并为药物筛选提供更好、更符合生理的平台。
