Paolo P. Provenzano

TL;DR: It is shown that systemic administration of an enzymatic agent can ablate stromal HA from autochthonous murine PDA, normalize IFP, and re-expand the microvasculature and in combination with the standard chemotherapeutic, gemcitabine, the treatment permanently remodels the tumor microenvironment and consistently achieves objective tumor responses, resulting in a near doubling of overall survival.

TL;DR: Three tumor-associated collagen signatures (TACS) are observed and defined that provide novel markers to locate and characterize tumors and should provide indications that a tumor is, or could become, invasive, and may serve as part of a strategy to help identify and characterize breast tumors in animal and human tissues.

TL;DR: This study provides the first data causally linking increased stromal collagen to mammary tumor formation and metastasis, and demonstrates that fundamental differences arise and persist in epithelial tumor cells that progressed within collagen-dense microenvironments.

TL;DR: It is proposed that quantifying collagen alignment is a viable, novel paradigm for the prediction of human breast cancer survival because of the strong statistical evidence for poor survival in patients with TACS and because the assessment can be performed in routine histopathological samples imaged via second harmonic generation or using picrosirius.

TL;DR: The current data provide compelling evidence for the importance of the mechanical features of the microenvironment, and suggest that mechanotransduction in these cells occurs through a FAK–Rho–ERK signaling network with extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) as a bottleneck through which much of the response to mechanical stimuli is regulated.