Cell Mechanics Lab

09.03.2009

A wide range of variations in microenvironment is encountered by a cancer-cell during metastasis. Structurally, the matrix surrounding a cell can range from highly aligned, long-scaled to highly disordered, short-scaled. Similarly, soluble cues picked up by motile cancer-cells span across multiple scales in length and time.

A major drawback of most in-vitro cell-culture systems is that such systems do not create a multiscalar variation of key metastatic cues such as matrix stiffness, degree of order, growth factors, etc. Therefore, development of microenvironlemt mimetics exhibiting such multiscalar variations becomes very important from the point of view of tissue engineering and implantable devices.

We are addressing this need by developing biocompatible multiscalar microenvironment mimetics for in-vitro studies.

Lead scholars: (1) Privita

                        (2) Subhajit        

Biomimetic Experimental Systems

An example of highly ordered cellular microenvironment

Range of organization at cellular scales

An example of highly disordered cellular microenvironment