In a study recently published in Nature, Drs. Paul Janmey and Vivek Shenoy, along with their graduate students Anne van Oosten and Xingyu Chen and collaborators, have answered the long-standing biomedical paradox of why tissues stiffen when compressed. 

Reported in The Medium, the researchers found that when tissue is compressed, the cells inside expand laterally, pulling on attached fibers and putting more overall tension on the network. Targeting the proteins that connect cells to the surrounding fiber network might therefore be the optimal way of reducing overall tissue stiffness, a goal in medical treatments for everything from cancer to obesity.

Read more here: The Medium

and here for the full Nature article.