Collective motility of cancer cells in hyperthermia

Hyperthermia has been used as cancer therapy since antiquity. Although the effect of extreme temperature on the proliferation of cancer cells has been studied in depth, many aspects of the science behind thermal therapy remain a mystery.

The movement of individual cells has been researched in detail, but until now collective cell movement was largely unstudied. Chen et al. analyzed the collective motility of cancer cells under heat stress. They observed the dynamics of cells subjected to heat stress using a long-term live imaging technique and particle imaging velocimetry.

After subjecting the cells to an elevated temperature of 48 C for ten minutes, the authors discovered that, as well as suppressing cancer cell proliferation, the heat stress caused cellular motions to speed up while maintaining roughly the same cell density and cell-cell adhesion, along with an increase in the cell shape index.

“The most surprising result in this research, is that an approximately linear relation is revealed between the collective migration velocity and the shape index of the heated cells,” said author Hong-Ping Zhao. “Indicating that heat stress may partially suppress the influences of some other factors, and the cell shape index seems to demonstrate a significant role in the collective heated cells movement.”

The authors noted that, although heat can impede cancer cell proliferation, it may also result in the elongation of cancer cells, which can lead to “unjamming” of cancer cells, thus increasing their motility.

The author’s research focused on human gastric cancer MGC-803 cells. They look forward to continuing their research with in vivo experiments and the study of more malignant cell lines. They hope to inform constructive reference for hyperthermia for cancer treatments.

Source: “The relation between the collective motility and shapes of human cancer cells under heat stress,” by Shaoyong Chen, Mingyue Liu, Huiming Huang, Zhenyu Zhang, Bo Li, Xi-Qiao Feng, and Hong-Ping Zhao, Applied Physics Letters (2019). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5125833 .