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Mechanics and tumor growth}
Two key elements control the proliferation of tumors. On the one hand, cancer cells accumulate gene mutations. On the other hand, tumors have to interact with neighboring cells and to push on their surrounding in order to grow. Therefore, mechanical stress is one of the important parameters that have to be taken into account to understand the influence of the tumor microenvironment.
Using a quantitative approach, we studied the effect of an applied mechanical stress on the long term growth of a spherical cancer cell aggregate.
Our results indicate the ability to modulate tumor growth depending on the applied pressure. In particular, we have shown that a small mechanical pressure (500 Pa) reduces drastically the growth of a model tumor spheroid. We also showed that stress does not affect cell death, but reduces cell proliferation in the tumor. Moreover, we demonstrate that the cells located in the core of the spheroid display a different response to stress than those at the periphery.
Using only mechanical ingredients, we developed a model to simulate numerically the cancer progression in the presence of a mechanical stress and to reproduce the behavior of tumor spheroids growing under (and without) pressure.