Deleterious Mechanical Deformation Selects Mechanoresilient Cancer Cells with Enhanced Proliferation and Chemoresistance

Cancer cells derived from secondary tumors can form new distant metastases more efficiently as compared to their primary tumor counterparts. This is partially due to the unfavorable microenvironments encountered by metastasizing cancer cells that result in the survival of a more metastatic phenotype from the original population. However, it is unclear how cancer cells may acquire such metastatic competency after overcoming deleterious mechanical stresses. Here, by forcing cancer cells to flow through small capillary-sized constrictions, we demonstrate that mechanical deformation can select a tumor cell subpopulation that exhibits resilience to mechanical squeezing-induced cell death. Transcriptomic profiling reveals up-regulated proliferation and DNA damage response pathways in this subpopulation, which are further translated into a more proliferative and chemotherapy-resistant phenotype. Our results highlight a potential link between the microenvironmental physical barriers and the enhanced malignancy of metastasizing cancer cells which may potentially be utilized for novel therapeutic strategies in preventing the metastatic spread of cancer cells.