Disrupting Mechanotransduction Promotes Regenerative Phenotypes in Human Cells

We quantify the effects of FAK inhibition on three-dimensional (3D) cultured human fibroblasts at the cellular and transcriptomic level using single cell RNA-sequencing. We demonstrate that mechanical stress induces pro-fibrotic fibroblast differentiation fates in large organisms, which can effectively be averted by FAK inhibition, which induces discrete fibroblast clusters that promote wound regeneration. scRNA-seq was performed on human fibroblasts from 3 different human patients in a physiologically relevant, 3-dimensional, in vitro, collagen scar system