Nasopharyngeal Cell Spreading and Migration Characteristics on Microengineered Gratings

Physical phenotypic behaviors of cancer cells such as spreading and migration are critical in tumor formation and expanding. On the other hand, these phenotypic behaviors are well proven to be determined by the cell environment. In this work, we adopt microengineered grating structure with ridge widths of 5 µm, 18 µm and a common depth of 15 µm to examine the corresponding migration and spreading of nasopharyngeal epithelial cells and nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells. Areas of cell spreading on the micro-grating substrates are quantified by an imaging technique based on interference reflection microscopy (IRM). The cell migration is characterized by recording cell positions over time, in order to derive migration speed and trajectory of every cell. Further, we investigate correlations between the spreading and migration characteristics. In short, our microengineered grating platform can be further applied in more detailed analyses on cell mechanobiology as well as the mechanotransduction-related mechanistic studies.