Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
City University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China.
ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2021 Apr 19;4(4):3224-3231. doi: 10.1021/acsabm.0c01610. Epub 2021 Feb 19.
Cell spreading and migration play a pivotal role in many diseases such as tumor metastasis. In particular, nasopharyngeal tumor cells have known of their tendency of migration to pterygoid muscles and further distant metastasis. Although existing studies revealed key characteristics of the nasopharyngeal tumor cells, their migration preference is yet to be thoroughly understood, especially in the physical aspects including the microtopographical factors. Researchers have developed techniques in recent years to study microtopography-related cell behaviors but they are not yet applied in investigating the nasopharyngeal tumor cells. In this work, we elaborate the spreading and migration characteristics of normal and cancerous nasopharyngeal cells on micrograting substrates mimicking the microtopography of myotubes of the pterygoid muscles. We further apply interference reflection microscopy (IRM) to visualize the cell-substrate adhesion dynamics. We are interested in examining the microtopography-related cell spreading and migration behaviors and their correlations, providing insights for deeper understanding and more promising prediction on the nasopharyngeal tumor metastasis.
细胞的铺展和迁移在许多疾病中起着关键作用，如肿瘤转移。特别是鼻咽肿瘤细胞具有向翼内肌迁移并进一步远处转移的倾向。尽管现有研究揭示了鼻咽肿瘤细胞的一些关键特征，但它们的迁移偏好仍未被充分理解，尤其是在物理方面，包括微地形因素。近年来，研究人员已经开发出一些技术来研究与微地形相关的细胞行为，但尚未应用于研究鼻咽肿瘤细胞。在这项工作中，我们详细研究了正常和癌变鼻咽细胞在微光栅基底上的铺展和迁移特性，该基底模拟了翼内肌肌管的微地形。我们进一步应用干涉反射显微镜（IRM）来可视化细胞-基底的黏附动力学。我们感兴趣的是研究与微地形相关的细胞铺展和迁移行为及其相关性，为更深入地了解和更有希望地预测鼻咽肿瘤转移提供见解。
