Like people, cells in the human body protect their personal space. They seem to know how much space they need, and if it gets too tight, most cells prefer to break free. The mechanism enabling cells to evade crowded environments appears to involve an unusual player — the cell nucleus. This is what researchers from St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute Vienna, King’s College London, Institute Curie Paris, and ETH Zürich in Basel showed in their recent work.
Tissue cells protect their “personal space”
The human body consists of trillions of cells growing in confined volumes, which often leads to cell crowding. The crowding effect is exacerbated when cell growth and proliferation are out of control during tumor formation. This creates a compressive microenvironment for the constituent cells. How do tumor cells cope with the lack of space and compressive stresses? Answering…
