Microenvironmental stiffness enhances glioma cell proliferation by stimulating epidermal growth factor receptor signaling.

ABSTRACT: The aggressive and rapidly lethal brain tumor glioblastoma (GBM) is associated with profound tissue stiffening and genomic lesions in key members of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway. Previous studies from our laboratory have shown that increasing microenvironmental stiffness in culture can strongly enhance glioma cell behaviors relevant to tumor progression, including proliferation, yet it has remained unclear whether stiffness and EGFR regulate proliferation through common or independent signaling mechanisms. Here we test the hypothesis that microenvironmental stiffness regulates cell cycle progression and proliferation in GBM tumor cells by altering EGFR-dependent signaling. We began by performing an unbiased reverse phase protein array screen, which revealed that stif

SUBMITTER: Umesh V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4084995 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature