Mechanical forces in cells could provide new information on cancer, Alzheimer’s

MechSE Professor Taher Saif is no stranger to the world of the microscopic. He is the director of the MEMS/Micromechanics lab, and has developed several MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) devices for use in his own research, studying the mechanics of the very, very small—including the c

ells that make up the human body.

Much of his research studies single cells and biological microenvironments. It is heavily related to mechanobiology, or the study of the effect of mechanical forces on cells. One subject of this research is the neuron and the effect that its mechanical growth has on memory and learning. Neurons stretch as a person grows; Saif and his group try to study why the neurons don’t fail as they stretch, how their mechanical properties help them to cope with the stretching, and most importantly, how memory storage and learning ability evolve with this stretch. They can study this using MEMS devices that Saif has developed, which can stretch individual cells.

"What we find is that without this mechanical force as we grow, the learning process may not happen," Saif said. "So the long-term goal is that if we can understand the effect of mechanical forces on the neurons, then we might be able to look at neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s from a different point of view."

Saif, in collaboration with Professor Akira Chiba in the Department of Cell and Structural Biology, discovered that the mechanical tension in the axon of a neuron has a strong effect on neurotransmission, or the process in which a neuron passes a signal to other neurons. If it is determined that diseased neurons in an Alzheimer’s patient don’t have the same mechanical properties as a healthy cell (for example, having a different level of tension in the neuronal axons that limited their ability to transmit signals), they may be able to find a treatment focusing on restoring these properties. Saif emphasizes that this is a long-term goal, but that the research has great potential.

Another way he applies mechanical expertise to cellular biology is in his studies of metastasis in cancer. Specifically, he researches the beginning of metastasis, and what causes the cancer cells to break away from the parent tumor. The answer may lie in the mechanical properties of the cells.

"In some of our work," Saif said, "we see that the stiffness of the tumor, or the mechanical microenvironment of the cancer cells, reaches a certain softness. Then somehow—and we don’t know how—that mechanical softness can send a signal to the cells, and they begin to come off from the parent tumor and spread around the body. So we are trying to understand what this mechanical signal is that the cells respond to that cause them to come off of the tumor and spread to other organs."

The answer to this question could lead to great advances in cancer research and treatment, and most importantly in the control and prevention of metastasis in cancer patients.

Saif has a very active collaboration with the Animal Science Department and the Cell and Developmental Biology Department at Illinois. He also works with neuroscientists from the Biology Department at the University of Miami and has significant collaborations with MIT and Georgia Tech as part of his work for the center for Emergent Behaviors in Cellular Systems (EBICS).