A 3D biophysical model for cancer spheroid cell-enhanced invasion in collagen-oriented fiber microenvironment

The process of in situ tumors developing into malignant tumors and exhibiting invasive behavior is extremely complicated.From a biophysical point of view,it is a phase change process affected by many factors,including cell-to-cell,cell-to-chemical material,cell-to-environment interaction,etc.In this study,we constructed spheroids based on green fluorescence metastatic breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 to simulate malignant tumors in vitro,while constructed a three-dimensional(3D)biochip to simulate a micro-environment for the growth and invasion of spheroids.In the experiment,the 3D spheroid was implanted into the chip,and the oriented collagen fibers controlled by collagen concentration and injection rate could guide the MDA-MB-231 cells in the spheroid to undergo directional invasion.The experiment showed that the oriented fibers greatly accelerated the invasion speed of MDA-MB-231 cells compared with the traditional uniform tumor micro-environment,namely obvious invasive branches appeared on the spheroids within 24 hours.In order to analyze this interesting phenomenon,we have developed a quantitative analyzing approach to explore strong angle correlation between the orientation of collagen fibers and invasive direction of cancer cell.The results showed that the oriented collagen fibers produced by the chip can greatly stimulate the invasion potential of cancer cells.This biochip is not only conducive to modeling cancer cell metastasis and studying cell invasion mechanisms,but also has the potential to build a quantitative evaluation platform that can be used in future chemical drug treatments.

Controlled generation of cell–laden hydrogel microspheres with core–shell scaffold mimicking microenvironment of tumor

Development of an in vitro three-dimensional(3D) model that closely mimics actual environment of tissue has become extraordinarily important for anti-cancer study. In recent years, various 3D cell culture systems have been developed,with multicellular tumor spheroids being the most popular and effective model. In this work, we present a microfluidic device used as a robust platform for generating core–shell hydrogel microspheres with precisely controlled sizes and varied components of hydrogel matrix. To gain a better understanding of the governing mechanism of microsphere formation,computational models based on multiphase flow were developed to numerically model the droplet generation and velocity field evolution process with COMSOL Multiphysics software. Our modeling results show good agreement with experiments in size dependence on flow rate as well as effect of vortex flow on microsphere formation. With real-time tuning of the flow rates of aqueous phase and oil phase, tumor cells were encapsulated into the microspheres with controllable core–shell structure and different volume ratios of core(comprised of alginate, Matrigel, and/or Collagen) and shell(comprised of alginate). Viability of cells in four different hydrogel matrices were evaluated by standard acridine orange(AO) and propidium iodide(PI) staining. The proposed microfluidic system can play an important role in engineering the in vitro micro-environment of tumor spheroids to better mimic the actual in vivo 3D spatial structure of a tumor and perfect the 3D tumor models for more effective clinical therapies.