title: Changes in cell shape are correlated with metastatic potential in murine and human osteosarcomas.
abstract: Metastatic cancer cells for many cancers are known to have altered cytoskeletal properties, in particular to be more deformable and contractile. Consequently, shape characteristics of more metastatic cancer cells may be expected to have diverged from those of their parental cells. To examine this hypothesis we study shape characteristics of paired osteosarcoma cell lines, each consisting of a less metastatic parental line and a more metastatic line, derived from the former by in vivo selection. Two-dimensional images of four pairs of lines were processed. Statistical analysis of morphometric characteristics shows that shape characteristics of the metastatic cell line are partly overlapping and partly diverged from the parental line. Significantly, the shape changes fall into two categories, with three paired cell lines displaying a more mesenchymal-like morphology, while the fourth displaying a change towards a more rounded morphology. A neural network algorithm could distinguish between samples of the less metastatic cells from the more metastatic cells with near perfect accuracy. Thus, subtle changes in shape carry information about the genetic changes that lead to invasiveness and metastasis of osteosarcoma cancer cells.
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Samanthe M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lyons
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Elaheh
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Alizadeh
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mannheimer
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schuamberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Jordan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Castle
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Bryce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schroder
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Turk
authors.affiliation: College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Thamm
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA ashokp@engr.colostate.edu.
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prasad
keywords: Cell shape; Cytoskeleton; Invasiveness; Machine learning; Metastasis; Morphometrics