Background: Interstitial flow in and around tumour tissue not only has particular importance in delivering anticancer agents to tumour tissue, but also affects the microenvironment to modulate tumour cell growth and metastasis. We investigated the roles of flow-induced shear stress in modulating radiosensitivity in two colon cancer cell lines and the underlying mechanisms. Materials and Methods...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Luminal shear stress has been reported to constrict cerebral arteries and arterioles of several species. Although the endothelium is not required for this response, it is not known whether the endothelium enhances or attenuates shear stress-induced constrictions. METHODS Middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) were isolated from male Long-Evans rats, mounted in a tissue bath, a...

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are mobilized from bone marrow to peripheral blood and contribute to angiogenesis in tissues. In the process, EPCs are exposed to the shear stress generated by blood flow and tissue fluid flow. Our previous study showed that shear stress promotes differentiation of EPCs into mature endothelial cells. In this study, we investigated whether EPCs differentiate i...

The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) is regulated by multiple extracellular stimuli, including shear stress. Previous studies suggest that the extracellular finger domains of ENaC α and γ subunits contain allosteric regulatory modules. However, the role of the finger domain in the shear stress response is unknown. We examined whether mutations of specific residues in the finger domain of the α ...

Previous studies have demonstrated that a high level of shear stress can produce platelet aggregation without the addition of any agonist. We investigated whether high shear stress could cause both platelet aggregation and shedding of microparticles from the platelet plasma membrane. A coneplate viscometer was used to apply shear stress and microparticle formation was measured by flow cytometry...

To know the role and initiation mechanism of the interaction of glycoprotein (GP) Ib with surface-immobilized von Willebrand factor (vWF), we examined the effect of shear stress levels on platelet binding to vWF-coated plates using a cone-and-plate type viscometer capable of loading various levels of shear stress. The extent of platelet binding to immobilized vWF reached a plateau at the shorte...

We study the pinch-off dynamics of droplets of yield stress and shear thinning fluids. To separate the two non-Newtonian effects, we use a yield stress material for which the yield stress can be tuned without changing the shear thinning behavior, and a shear thinning system (without a yield stress) for which the shear thinning can be controlled over a large range, without introducing too much e...

The application of fluid shear stress to endothelial cells elicits the formation of nitric oxide (NO) and phosphorylation of the endothelial NO synthase (eNOS). Shear stress also elicits the enhanced tyrosine phosphorylation of endothelial proteins, especially of those situated in the vicinity of cell-cell contacts. Since a major constituent of these endothelial cell-cell contacts is the platel...

BACKGROUND The shear stress induced by blood flow may play a pivotal role in the induction or prevention of atherosclerosis by changing endothelial functions. To disclose the mechanisms of this change, we prepared an endothelial cell (EC) cDNA library to select specific clones expressed in response to shear stress. METHODS AND RESULTS The mRNA of cultured confluent bovine aortic ECs (BAECs) s...

Shear stress is one of mechanical constraints which are exerted by blood flow on endothelial cells (ECs). To adapt to shear stress, ECs align in the direction of flow through adherens junction (AJ) remodeling. However, mechanisms regulating ECs alignment under shear stress are poorly understood. The scaffold protein IQ domain GTPase activating protein 1 (IQGAP1) is a scaffold protein which coup...