Center for Soft and Living Matter, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Ulsan 44919, Republic of Korea.
Lab Chip. 2017 Dec 5;17(24):4171-4185. doi: 10.1039/c7lc00555e.
Recent advances in microengineered cell migration platforms are discussed critically with a focus on how cell migration is influenced by engineered tumor microenvironments, the medical relevance being to understand how tumor microenvironments may promote or suppress the progression of cancer. We first introduce key findings in cancer cell migration under the influence of the physical environment, which is systematically controlled by microengineering technology, followed by multi-cues of physico-chemical factors, which represent the complexity of the tumor environment. Recognizing that cancer cells constantly communicate not only with each other but also with tumor-associated cells such as vascular, fibroblast, and immune cells, and also with non-cellular components, it follows that cell motility in tumor microenvironments, especially metastasis via the invasion of cancer cells into the extracellular matrix and other tissues, is closely related to the malignancy of cancer-related mortality. Medical relevance of forefront research realized in microfabricated devices, such as single cell sorting based on the analysis of cell migration behavior, may assist personalized theragnostics based on the cell migration phenotype. Furthermore, we urge development of theory and numerical understanding of single or collective cell migration in microengineered platforms to gain new insights in cancer metastasis and in therapeutic strategies.
本文批判性地讨论了微工程细胞迁移平台的最新进展，重点关注工程化肿瘤微环境如何影响细胞迁移，其医学相关性在于了解肿瘤微环境如何促进或抑制癌症的进展。我们首先介绍了在物理环境影响下癌细胞迁移的关键发现，微工程技术可以系统地控制物理环境，然后介绍了物理化学因素的多线索，这些线索代表了肿瘤环境的复杂性。认识到癌细胞不仅彼此之间而且与血管、成纤维细胞和免疫细胞等肿瘤相关细胞以及非细胞成分不断地进行交流，因此肿瘤微环境中的细胞迁移，特别是癌细胞通过侵入细胞外基质和其他组织的侵袭转移，与癌症相关死亡率的恶性程度密切相关。在微制造设备中实现的前沿研究的医学相关性，例如基于细胞迁移行为分析的单细胞分选，可能有助于基于细胞迁移表型的个性化治疗。此外，我们敦促在微工程平台中发展对单细胞或细胞群体迁移的理论和数值理解，以获得癌症转移和治疗策略方面的新见解。
