Multimodal microscale mechanical mapping of cancer cells in complex microenvironments

The mechanical phenotype of the cell is critical for survival following deformations due to confinement and fluid flow. One idea is that cancer cells are plastic and adopt different mechanical phenotypes under different geometries that aid in their survival. Thus, an attractive goal is to disrupt cancer cells' ability to adopt multiple mechanical states. To begin to address this question, we aimed to quantify the diversity of these mechanical states using in vitro biomimetics to mimic in vivo two-dimen-sional (2D) and 3D extracellular matrix environments. Here, we used two modalities Brillouin microscopy (-GHz) and broadband frequency (7-15 kHz) optical tweezer microrheology to measure microscale cell mechanics. We measured the response of intra-cellular mechanics of cancer cells cultured in 2D and 3D environments where we modified substrate stiffness, dimensionality (2D versus 3D), and presence of fibrillar topography. We determined that there was good agreement between two modalities despite the difference in timescale of the two measurements. These findings on cell mechanical phenotype in different environments confirm a correlation between modalities that employ different mechanisms at different temporal scales (Hz-kHz versus GHz). We also determined that observed heterogeneity in cell shape is more closely linked to the cells' mechanical state. More-over, individual cells in multicellular spheroids exhibit a lower degree of mechanical heterogeneity when compared with single cells cultured in monodisperse 3D cultures. The observed decreased heterogeneity among cells in spheroids suggested that there is mechanical cooperativity between cells that make up a single spheroid.

Automated summary

By measuring cell mechanical phenotypes using different modalities, it was found that cells exhibit different mechanical characteristics in different environments; meanwhile, the heterogeneity in cell shape is closely linked to the cells' mechanical state; in multicellular spheroids, there is mechanical cooperativity between cells.