Detachment Dynamics of Cancer Cells

Abstract

Cell adhesion and detachment are crucial components in cancer spreading, often leading to recurrence and patient death [1]. Probing the mechanical behavior at the whole cell level while the cell is undergoing spreading and detachment during would enhance our understanding on cancer metastasis. However, these processes are not well understood in a quantitative sense, especially for the cancer cells [2]. In this article, we propose a biohybrid micro-device for the investigation of cellular attachment and detachment dynamics. This device comprises of silicon nanowires as electromechanical strain sensors, embedded in a suspended doubly-clamped silicon dioxide (SiO₂) microbridge (Fig. 1A & Fig. 2A) for breast cancer (MCF-7) cells seeding and attachment (Fig. 1B).