ABSTRACT Cancer progression has been shown to be accompanied by alterations in physical features of its microenvironment. In the study, we fabricated an aligned collagen fibre matrix, whose architecture in both micro‐level and nano‐level was similar to that of the matrix found around the breast tumour tissue. The modulus of matrix exhibited a stiffness similarly to that found in metastatic breast tumour tissue. On the tough substrate, MDA‐MB‐231 cells presented an increased migration rate along the alignment of fibre. The biomechanical properties of tumour cells were explored in situ by AFM. The stiffness of a single MDA‐MB‐231 cell on the aligned matrix was reduced when compared with that on the nonaligned one. Wound healing assay showed that tumour cells with compliant modulus moved fast along the alignment of collagen fibre matrix. The in vitro model effectively mimicked the tumour cell behaviour, which would be helpful for new therapeutic strategies to detect cancer progress.
Lin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.