2023 Volume 37 Issue 2 Pages 56-63
During metastasis cancer cells pass through tiny gaps in blood vessel walls and between cells. Since the nucleus is the largest organelle in the cell and is much stiffer than the perinuclear cytoplasm, it may be a major physical constraint for metastasis. Here, we tested the hypothesis that cancer cells with higher metastatic potential have softer nuclei than those with lower metastatic potential. We performed a compression test on cell nuclei isolated from two metastatic B16 melanoma variants (B16-F1 and B16-F10) with different metastatic potentials. The results demonstrated that the nuclei isolated from B16-F1 cells, a lower metastatic cancer cell line, had a significantly higher Young’s modulus than B16-F10 cells, a higher metastatic cancer cell line. We also performed a compression test on the whole cell, encompassing the cell nucleus. Among similar whole-cell strains, B16-F10 cells showed a larger compressive strain in the intracellular nucleus than B16-F1 cells. In contrast, the force exerted on the intracellular nuclei of B16-F1 cells was similar to that of B16-F10 cells in the same whole-cell strain. These results suggest that B16-F10 cells may have adopted a strategy of enhancing the deformability of the cell nucleus to improve their metastatic potential.
