Transcriptomic profiling of the stiffness-induced dormant cells in oral squamous cell carcinoma. Homo sapiens

Dormancy is a crucial machinery for cancer cells to survive hostile microenvironment. Dormant tumor cells are considered as the major cause of post-treatment relapse and metastases, which are the two main factors that dramatically impair patient prognosis in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, the regulatory mechanism of tumor cell dormancy in OSCC is unclear. We found that stiffness-related mechanical stress (MS) induces a dormant subpopulation in OSCC. Here we used RNA-seq to further characterize the transcriptomic alterations in this stiffness-induced dormant subpopulation.