The Role of Mechanical Properties and Structure of Type I Collagen Hydrogels on Colorectal Cancer Cell Migration.

Mechanical interactions between cells and their microenvironment play an important role in determining cell fate, which is particularly relevant in metastasis, a process where cells invade tissue matrices with different mechanical properties. In vitro, type I collagen hydrogels have been commonly used for modeling the microenvironment due to its ubiquity in the human body. In this work, we analyze the combined influence of the stiffness of these hydrogels and their ultrastructure on the migration patterns of HCT-116 and HT-29 spheroids. For this, we prepared six different types of pure type I collagen hydrogels by changing the collagen concentration and the gelation temperature. We measured the stiffness of each sample and characterized its ultrastructure. We then performed cell migration studies by seeding the spheroids in three different spatial conditions. We show that changes in the aforementioned parameters lead to differences in the mechanical stiffness of the matrices as well as the ultrastructure. These differences, in turn, lead to distinct cell migration patterns of HCT-116 and HT-29 spheroids in either of the spatial conditions tested. Based on these results, we conclude that the stiffness and the ultrastructural organization of the matrix can actively modulate cell migration behavior in colorectal cancer spheroids. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.