Why do some breast tumors grow aggres­sively while oth­ers grow slowly? In this study, researchers found that the stiff­ness of the cells in the area around an emerg­ing tumor influ­ences its abil­ity to grow and invade the breast. Using a 3-D fab­ri­ca­tion process, the researchers cre­ated arti­fi­cial breast ducts con­tain­ing nor­mal breast cells and a sin­gle tumor cell. They found that regions char­ac­ter­ized by stiff­ness among the nor­mal cells were more likely to give rise to tumors that are aggres­sive and inva­sive, while regions that were less stiff gave rise to tumors that are less invasive.

Eline Boghaert, Jason P. Gleghorn, Kan­gAe Lee, Nikolce Gjorevski, Derek C. Radisky, and Celeste M. Nel­son. Host epithe­lial geom­e­try reg­u­lates breast can­cer
cell inva­sive­ness. Pub­lished online before print Novem­ber 12, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1118872109 PNAS Novem­ber 12, 2012

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