Physical immune escape: Weakened mechanical communication leads to escape of metastatic colorectal carcinoma cells from macrophages

Abstract

The significance of biochemical cues in the tumor immune microenvironment in affecting cancer metastasis is well established, but the role of physical factors in the microenvironment remains largely unexplored. In this article, we investigated how the mechanical interaction between cancer cells and immune cells, mediated by extracellular matrix (ECM), influences immune escape of cancer cells. We focus on the mechanical regulation of macrophages’ targeting ability on two distinct types of colorectal carcinoma (CRC) cells with different metastatic potentials. Our results show that macrophages can effectively target CRC cells with low metastatic potential, due to the strong contraction exhibited by the cancer cells on the ECM, and that cancer cells with high metastatic potential demonstrated weakened contractions on the ECM and can thus evade macrophage attack to achieve immune escape. Our findings regarding the intricate mechanical interactions between immune cells and cancer cells can serve as a crucial reference for further exploration of cancer immunotherapy strategies.