Remembering Stiffness: HCC Maintains Malignancy through Heritable Hyperacetylation Driven by Mechanically Mediated Acetyl-CoA Levels.

Hepatocellular carcinoma cells retain a stiffness “mechanical memory” after metastasizing to soft lung niches, sustaining malignancy via heritable hyperacetylation driven by mechanically mediated acetyl-CoA levels.

• Why it matters: Tumor cells often leave rigid primary sites, but it was unclear whether mechanical adaptations persist in softer metastatic environments and continue to support proliferation.
• What they did: Luo and colleagues show that contractility-dependent suppression of mitochondrial fission increases acetyl-CoA, which sustains histone hyperacetylation across cell generations in metastatic HCC.
• The result: The work identifies a mechano-metabolic-epigenetic axis that preserves a proliferative state during metastatic dissemination, implying stiffness-linked epigenetic inheritance in HCC.

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