Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Characterizing Mechanical Regulation Of Bone Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells, Boyuan Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Breast cancer most frequently metastasizes to the skeleton. Bone metastatic cancer is incurable and induces wide-spread bone osteolysis, resulting in significant patient morbidity and mortality. Mechanical stimuli in the skeleton are an important microenvironmental parameter that modulates tumor formation, osteolysis, and tumor cell-bone cell signaling, but which mechanical signals are the most beneficial and the corresponding molecular mechanisms are unknown. This work focused on bone matrix deformation and interstitial fluid flow based on their well-known roles in bone remodeling and in primary breast cancer. The goal of our research was to establish a platform that could define the relationship between …