The Effects of Drug Treatment on Cellular Mechanics in Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells

Paclitaxel (Taxol), a common anti-cancer drug, has been on the market for over two decades, but its specific mechanism of action is not well understood. For this reason, it is not possible to calculate or personalize treatments beyond empirical knowledge of the maximum safe dosage. In order to work towards the possibility of personalized and calculated treatment, the specific effect of Taxol on cancer cells’ organization was examined and prepared for quantification. MDA-MB-231-Br cells were subjected to a spectrum of dosages of Taxol and an MTS assay to approximate the IC₅₀ of Taxol on this cell line to be 10 nM. These cells were then treated with dosages ranging from 10 times above to 10 times below the IC₅₀, and stained for actin to visualize their actin cytoskeleton. Finally, a novel process was developed for building a detailed 3D finite element model of cancer cells from confocal fluorescent images. This project enables any work which currently uses a simplistic finite-element model to enhance results with a morphologically accurate model. In the future, the aforementioned process will be developed into a procedure for correlating and validating the model with experimental data, allowing predictive applications.