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Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments

The long-known role of cell migration in physiological and pathological contexts still requires extensive research to be fully understood, mainly because of the intricate interaction between moving cells and their surroundings. While conventional assays fail to capture this complexity, recently deve...

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Autores principales: Conti, Martina, Bolzan, Ilaria, Dal Zilio, Simone, Parisse, Pietro, Andolfi, Laura, Lazzarino, Marco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9599853/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36290959
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios12100822
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author Conti, Martina
Bolzan, Ilaria
Dal Zilio, Simone
Parisse, Pietro
Andolfi, Laura
Lazzarino, Marco
author_facet Conti, Martina
Bolzan, Ilaria
Dal Zilio, Simone
Parisse, Pietro
Andolfi, Laura
Lazzarino, Marco
author_sort Conti, Martina
collection PubMed
description The long-known role of cell migration in physiological and pathological contexts still requires extensive research to be fully understood, mainly because of the intricate interaction between moving cells and their surroundings. While conventional assays fail to capture this complexity, recently developed 3D platforms better reproduce the cellular micro-environment, although often requiring expensive and time-consuming imaging approaches. To overcome these limitations, we developed a novel approach based on 2D micro-patterned substrates, compatible with conventional microscopy analysis and engineered to create micro-gaps with a length of 150 µm and a lateral size increasing from 2 to 8 µm, where a curved water–air interface is created on which cells can adhere, grow, and migrate. The resulting hydrophilic/hydrophobic interfaces, variable surface curvatures, spatial confinements, and size values mimic the complex micro-environment typical of the extracellular matrix in which aggressive cancer cells proliferate and migrate. The new approach was tested with two breast cancer cell lines with different invasive properties. We observed that invasive cells (MDA-MB-231) can align along the pattern and modify both their morphology and their migration rate according to the size of the water meniscus, while non-invasive cells (MCF-7) are only slightly respondent to the surrounding micro-environment. Moreover, the selected pattern highlighted a significative matrix deposition process connected to cell migration. Although requiring further optimizations, this approach represents a promising tool to investigate cell migration in complex environments.
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spelling pubmed-95998532022-10-27 Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments Conti, Martina Bolzan, Ilaria Dal Zilio, Simone Parisse, Pietro Andolfi, Laura Lazzarino, Marco Biosensors (Basel) Article The long-known role of cell migration in physiological and pathological contexts still requires extensive research to be fully understood, mainly because of the intricate interaction between moving cells and their surroundings. While conventional assays fail to capture this complexity, recently developed 3D platforms better reproduce the cellular micro-environment, although often requiring expensive and time-consuming imaging approaches. To overcome these limitations, we developed a novel approach based on 2D micro-patterned substrates, compatible with conventional microscopy analysis and engineered to create micro-gaps with a length of 150 µm and a lateral size increasing from 2 to 8 µm, where a curved water–air interface is created on which cells can adhere, grow, and migrate. The resulting hydrophilic/hydrophobic interfaces, variable surface curvatures, spatial confinements, and size values mimic the complex micro-environment typical of the extracellular matrix in which aggressive cancer cells proliferate and migrate. The new approach was tested with two breast cancer cell lines with different invasive properties. We observed that invasive cells (MDA-MB-231) can align along the pattern and modify both their morphology and their migration rate according to the size of the water meniscus, while non-invasive cells (MCF-7) are only slightly respondent to the surrounding micro-environment. Moreover, the selected pattern highlighted a significative matrix deposition process connected to cell migration. Although requiring further optimizations, this approach represents a promising tool to investigate cell migration in complex environments. MDPI 2022-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9599853/ /pubmed/36290959 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios12100822 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Conti, Martina
Bolzan, Ilaria
Dal Zilio, Simone
Parisse, Pietro
Andolfi, Laura
Lazzarino, Marco
Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title_full Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title_fullStr Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title_full_unstemmed Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title_short Water–Air Interface to Mimic In Vitro Tumoral Cell Migration in Complex Micro-Environments
title_sort water–air interface to mimic in vitro tumoral cell migration in complex micro-environments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9599853/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36290959
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios12100822
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