Effect of micropillar density on morphology and migration of low and high metastatic potential breast cancer cells

Study of cell migration in cancer is crucial to the comprehension of the processes and factors that govern tumor spread. Cancer cells migrate invading tissues, causing alterations in cell adhesion, cytoskeleton, and signaling pathways. Little is known about the physical attributes of cancer cells that change when interacting with microenvironments. In this work, the local topography of the ECM has been mimicked through micropillar array substrates. MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells, exhibiting high and low metastatic potential, respectively, were analyzed. Differences in morphology and migration of the cells were investigated by examining the cell spreading area, circularity, aspect ratio, migration speed, and migration path. This work encountered that none of the studied cell lines have preferential orientation migrating on uniform patterns. In contrast, cell migration on graded patterns shows preferential orientation along the longitudinal direction from sparser to denser zones which is significantly influenced by substrate stiffness and indicates that both cell lines can sense the spacing gradient and respond to this topographical cue. The migration speed of the breast cancer cell lines significantly decreases from the sparse to medium to dense zones, registering higher values for the MDA-MB-231.