Abstract 364: Mechanical properties of growing melanocytic nevi and the progression to melanoma

Abstract

Abstract Melanocytic nevi are benign proliferations that sometimes turn into malignant melanoma in a way that is still unclear from the biochemical and genetic point of view. Diagnostic and prognostic tools are then mostly based on dermoscopic examination and morphological analysis of histological tissues. To investigate the role of mechanics and geometry in the morpholgical dynamics of melanocytic nevi, we study a computation model for cell proliferation in a layered non-linear elastic tissue. Numerical simulations show that the morphology of the nevus is correlated to the initial location of the proliferating cell starting the growth process and to the mechanical properties of the tissue. Our results also show that melanocytes are subject to compressive stresses that fluctuate widely in the nevus and depend on the growth stage. This result is important because mechanical stress has an effect that differs for primary and metastatic melanoma. We show experimentally that osmotic stress and collagen inhibit growth in primary melanoma cells while the effect is much weaker in metastatic cells. Knowing that morphological features of nevi might also reflect geometry and mechanics rather than malignancy could be relevant for diagnostic purposes. Citation Format: Alessandro Taloni, Alexander A. Alemi, Emilio Ciusani, James Sethna, Stefano Zaperi, Caterina Anna Maria Laporta. Mechanical properties of growing melanocytic nevi and the progression to melanoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 364. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-364