The seminar is entitled "Cell adhesion strength and tractions are mechano-diagnostic features of cellular invasiveness."

Abstract: The adhesion of cells to substrates occurs via integrin clustering and binding to the actin cytoskeleton. Oncogenes modify anchorage-dependent mechanisms in cells during cancer progression. Experiments using a fluid shear device are useful to delineate differences in adhesion strengths between cancer cells, sort heterogeneous cell populations based on differential adhesions, and quantify the signaling mechanisms in adhesomes during cancer metastasis. We used a custom fluid shear device to  measure the adhesion strengths of invasive, non-invasive, and control cells to substrates and quantified the cell tractions. Results from our experiments demonstrate the roles of cell areas, tractions and critical adhesion strengths in cellular adhesions to substrates. A theoretical model, incorporating stochasticity of cell adhesions to the substrate and population-level differences in cell sizes, was able to recapitulate the experimentally obtained detachment curves. We also explore the role of ligand types and coating density on cell adhesions to substrates. Through such studies, we demonstrate the ability to quantify the adhesive heterogeneity in cells. Correlations between the cell adhesion strengths and tractions with invasiveness potentials may be useful in cancer diagnostics and other pathologies featuring misregulation in adhesion.

Speaker Bio: Namrata Gundiah is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Her research interests are broadly in tissue mechanics of cardiovascular tissues and in cell mechanobiology. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. She earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been awarded the Ramanujan Fellowship from the Government of India, and the Constance Tipper Silver Medal from the International Congress on Fracture. She is on the editorial board of Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, and Frontiers: Cell Adhesion and Migration journals. She has an administrative role as Chair of the Research grants office at the Institute which she helped start. 

Please contact Deva Chan with any questions: chand@purdue.edu

This seminar is co-hosted by the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and the Purdue Center for Cancer Research.