Fast deformation under flow and morphological recovery of cancer cells
Catherine Villard (U. Paris-Cité)
Warning: joint seminar with LPS, takes place at LPS
The cancer metastatic cascade includes a blood circulation step for cells detached from the primary tumor. This stage involves significant shear stress as well as large and fast deformations as the cells circulate through the microvasculature. The recovery dynamics after deformation is pivotal to understand how a cell can pass through the multiple capillary constrictions encountered during a single hemodynamic cycle.
I will present results on the recovery dynamics of circulating cells representative of different cancer phenotypes and their nuclei, obtained thanks to a dedicated microfluidic system we have recently developed.
In brief, all cell types display an elastic recovery behavior followed by a slower viscoelastic regime, while nuclei, depending on the cell type, can strikingly recover purely elastically over a time scale of 20 ms. The fast elastic cell recovery regime is under the control of cell contractility ensured by the integrity of the cell acto-myosin cortex while the presence of a vimentin cage around the nuclei confers elastic properties to this organelle.
I will finally discuss how these behaviors can possibly impact cell transit and survival into the blood circulation.