BME Faculty Member Search- Miranda Hunter- Force of nature: mechanical regulation of cancer progression

I am a cell biologist studying how cancer cells survive and thrive in challenging environments. My research aims to define how cancer cells sense, respond, and adapt to mechanical stress, and how these mechanisms enable tumor progression. By applying spatial transcriptomics, mechanical perturbations, and quantitative microscopy to a zebrafish model of melanoma, I discovered that cells at the tumor border are reprogrammed to drive tumor invasion, adopting a novel “interface” cell state. I found that interface cells experience significant compressive stress as they escape the primary tumor. Compression triggers cytoskeletal and chromatin remodeling to reinforce cells against mechanical stress and promote invasion and drug resistance. My work reveals that mechanical force is a key driver of transcriptional, epigenetic, and phenotypic changes in tumor cells, and provides a mechanism for the longstanding question of how the physical environment controls cancer behavior.