CPM Seminar

The interaction of healthy and cancerous cells with nano- and microtopography: consequences on the cell nucleus

Patricia Davidson

Cornell University

Considerable effort has been made recently to understand the architecture and balance of forces within the cell. One would intuitively expect that only the outer parts of cells (cell membrane, surface receptors) can interact with surfaces having topographical features but that the interior of the cell (its organelles) would not be affected. However, we have shown that surface topography can be used to alter not only the shape of the cell as a whole, but also the interior of the cell, and in particular the nucleus. [1] Remarkably, our results suggest that the deformation is much stronger in cancerous cell lines: experiments conducted with healthy and immortalized cells lines resulted in lesser deformation, or of a different type.[2] Surprisingly, the deformation induced in the nuclei of cancerous cells did not result in detectable changes in the behavior of these cells: viability, proliferation and differentiation were not found to be greatly affected. It seems that cancerous cells are unaffected by deformation, most likely a necessity for successful metastatic migration. Understanding the differences in how cancerous and healthy cells react to deformation is important in developing new strategies to combat cancer, and in particular metastasis, in which cancerous cells are able to travel through the body and create a new tumor elsewhere.

[1] P. Davidson et al., Adv. Mater. 21(35), 3586 (2009)
[2] P. Davidson et al., JMSMM, 21(3), 939-946 (2010)