bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/513218; this version posted January 7, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Compressive Stress Enhances Invasive Phenotype of Cancer Cells via Piezo1 Activation Mingzhi Luo1,2, Kenneth K. Y. Ho2, Zhaowen Tong3, Linhong Deng1,*, Allen P. Liu2,3,4,5,* 1 Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, Changzhou University, Changzhou, Jiangsu, P. R. China 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 3 Department of Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 5 Cellular and Molecular Biology Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States * Corresponding author: Linhong Deng, +86-13685207009,
[email protected]; Allen P. Liu, +1-734-764-7719,
[email protected] bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/513218; this version posted January 7, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Abstract Uncontrolled growth in solid tumor generates compressive stress that drives cancer cells into invasive phenotypes, but little is known about how such stress affects the invasion and matrix degradation of cancer cells and the underlying mechanisms. Here we show that compressive stress enhanced invasion, matrix degradation, and invadopodia formation of breast cancer cells. We further identified Piezo1 channels as the putative mechanosensitive cellular components that transmit the compression to induce calcium influx, which in turn triggers activation of RhoA, Src, FAK, and ERK signaling, as well as MMP-9 expression.