Epithelial defense against cancer

Epithelial defence against cancer (EDAC) is a form of cell competition between healthy cells and transformed cells of the same cell type, resulting in apical extrusion of the transformed cells from the monolayer (reported first by Hogan et al, 2011). 

In this project, we investigate whether collectivity in epithelia is required to extrude out incipient cells with cancerous mutations. We mix wild-type and inducible transformed cells and observe the fate of the transformed cells and the spatiotemporal dynamics of the cells surrounding the transformed cells. We observed that the fate of the transformed cell is contingent on its location in the epithelial monolayers- while transformed cells that are located in regions of local Actin oscillations (Muthukrishnan et al, under revision) are extruded out of the monolayer, transformed cells in regions where local Actin oscillations are absent are not extruded. We are further investigating how collectivity in epithelia facilitates EDAC.