Back to Search
Start Over
Microenvironmental Stiffness of 3D Polymeric Structures to Study Invasive Rates of Cancer Cells
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- Cells are highly dynamic elements, continuously interacting with the extracellular environment. Mechanical forces sensed and applied by cells are responsible for cellular adhesion, motility, and deformation, and are heavily involved in determining cancer spreading and metastasis formation. Cell/extracellular matrix interactions are commonly analyzed with the use of hydrogels and 3D microfabricated scaffolds. However, currently available techniques have a limited control over the stiffness of microscaffolds and do not allow for separating environmental properties from biological processes in driving cell mechanical behavior, including nuclear deformability and cell invasiveness. Herein, a new approach is presented to study tumor cell invasiveness by exploiting an innovative class of polymeric scaffolds based on two-photon lithography to control the stiffness of deterministic microenvironments in 3D. This is obtained by fine-tuning of the laser power during the lithography, thus locally modifying both structural and mechanical properties in the same fabrication process. Cage-like structures and cylindric stent-like microscaffolds are fabricated with different Young's modulus and stiffness gradients, allowing obtaining new insights on the mechanical interplay between tumor cells and the surrounding environments. In particular, cell invasion is mostly driven by softer architectures, and the introduction of 3D stiffness “weak spots” is shown to boost the rate at which cancer cells invade the scaffolds. The possibility to modulate structural compliance also allowed estimating the force distribution exerted by a single cell on the scaffold, revealing that both pushing and pulling forces are involved in the cell–structure interaction. Overall, exploiting this method to obtain a wide range of 3D architectures with locally engineered stiffness can pave the way for unique applications to study tumor cell dynamics. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
Scaffold
Materials science
Polymers
Mechanical Phenomena
Biomedical Engineering
Pharmaceutical Science
Nanotechnology
Cell Communication
02 engineering and technology
Multiphoton lithography
Biomaterials
Extracellular matrix
invasivene
03 medical and health sciences
Cell Movement
Cell Line, Tumor
Elastic Modulus
Cell Adhesion
medicine
Humans
Neoplasm Invasiveness
Cell adhesion
stiffne
cancer cell
technology, industry, and agriculture
Stiffness
Hydrogels
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
Biomaterial
Extracellular Matrix
030104 developmental biology
Self-healing hydrogels
Cancer cell
mechanosensing
two-photon lithography
medicine.symptom
0210 nano-technology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....14943743ea37d03d9271a5b980775858