In tumors, cells follow microscopic fibers, comparable to following roads through a city. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology developed a new technique to study different features of these “fiber highways” to provide new insights into how cells move efficiently through the tumor environment.
The study, published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, focused on contact guidance, a process where migrating cells follow aligned collagen fibers. Understanding this process is crucial, as it plays a key role in cancer metastasis, the spread of cancer to other parts of the body.
“Previous research on contact guidance, a process where cancer cells migrate along aligned collagen fibers, has been largely studied in collagen gels with uniform fiber alignment,” said Vinay Abhyankar, associate professor of biomedical engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, and study co-author. “However, the tumor microenvironment also features subtle variations or gradients in fiber alignment, and their role in cell migration has been largely unexplored. We suspected that alignment gradients could efficiently direct cell movement but lacked the technology to test the hypothesis.”