Cell polarity defects and hypotonic stress in epithelial neoplasms

In recent collaborative work with the Hammerschmidt and Humbert labs we combined different transgenic zebrafish models and human breast epithelial culture systems to assess how disturbed polarity signaling and hypotonicity contribute to epithelial cancers. We found that epithelial polarity defects (caused by loss of Scribble) and hypotonic stress cooperate to induce matriptase-dependent epidermal carcinogenesis in fish and human cells (Hatzold et al., 2023).