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Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, with an estimated 112 million people projected to be affected by 2040. The primary risk factor for POAG is elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), which is primarily driven by increased resistance to aqueous humor outflow through the conventional outflow pathway. Despite its prevalence, the precise biomechanical mechanisms underlying this resistance remain unclear. In this study, we utilized 3D in situ traction force microscopy to investigate the effects of the rho kinase (ROCK) inhibitor Y-27632 and the YAP/TAZ inhibitor Verteporfin treatments on the trabecular meshwork (TM) and juxtacanalicular tissue (JCT) cellular contractility and their extracellular matrix (ECM) reorganization in both normal and glaucomatous human donor eyes. Our analysis revealed dysregulated traction forces within glaucomatous tissues, leading to significant ECM reorganization that may contribute to disrupting the homeostasis of the aqueous outflow pathway. Treatments appear to help restore normal ECM structure by adjusting cellular forces. The effect on contractile forces differed between genders, suggesting the significance of gender in treatment response. Our results suggest that targeting these biomechanical pathways may offer new therapeutic strategies to reduce outflow resistance, laying the groundwork for future therapies aimed at preserving vision by restoring ECM biomechanics and improving outflow.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tice.2025.103005 | DOI Listing |
Int J Surg
September 2025
Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Background: Phrenic nerve injury during mediastinal tumor resection can lead to significant postoperative diaphragmatic dysfunction. Current intraoperative protection techniques are imprecise and lack real-time feedback. We aimed to develop and validate a quantifiable, multimodal neuroprotective strategy.
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September 2025
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, USA.
In confluent cell monolayers, patterns of cell forces and motion are systematically altered near topological defects in cell shape. In turn, defects have been proposed to alter cell density, extrusion, and invasion, but it remains unclear how the defects form and how they affect cell forces and motion. Here, we studied +1/2 defects, and, in contrast to prior studies, we observed the concurrent occurrence of both tail-to-head and head-to-tail defect motion in the same cell monolayer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Biomater
September 2025
Faculty of medicine and health technology, Tampere University, Arvo Ylpön katu 34, 33520 Tampere, Finland. Electronic address:
In the eye, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) maintains the functionality and welfare of retinal photoreceptors and forms a tight, interlocked structure with photoreceptor outer segments (POSs). The RPE-retina interaction is difficult to recapitulate in vitro, limiting the studies addressing the retinal maintenance functions of the RPE. To overcome this challenge, we constructed a retina-mimicking structure using a soft polyacrylamide hydrogel coated with Matrigel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur J Cell Biol
September 2025
The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China; Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Center (BEBC), Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China. Electronic address:
Cell migration toward stiffer or softer environments (durotaxis) underlies processes from development to cancer metastasis, yet the underlying mechanism and its universality remain unclear. To resolve this, we investigated how traction forces and directional persistence dictate cell migration along stiffness gradients. We utilized tunable PEG hydrogels with stiffness gradients of 1-16 kPa and perturbed contractility (blebbistatin, oligomycin), and adhesion (vinculin mutants), in cancer cells exhibiting opposing durotactic biases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRev Sci Instrum
September 2025
Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University, 2333CC Leiden, The Netherlands.
Whether at the molecular or cellular scale in organisms, cell-cell adhesion adapts to external mechanical cues arising from the static environment of cells and from dynamic interactions between neighboring cells. Cell-cell adhesion needs to resist detachment forces to secure the integrity and internal organization of organisms. In the past, various techniques have been developed to characterize adhesion properties of molecules and cells in vitro and to understand how cells sense and probe their environment.
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