Bio-inspired soft polystyrene nanotube substrate for rapid and highly efficient breast cancer-cell capture

The softness of materials is very important in cellular processes, such as cell adhesion, spread, proliferation and differentiation. Using soft materials benefits many biological studies and applications, such as wound healing, tissue engineering and clinical surgery. However, in other areas, such as rare cancer-cell capture and isolation, the importance of the softness of materials has not yet been studied. Extracellular matrix suitable for cell contact and survival is formed from soft materials with specific molecules and nanostructures. Herein, we report a soft polystyrene nanotube substrate inspired by the cell microenvironment that achieves rapid and highly efficient breast cancer-cell capture from whole-blood samples with high cell viability by integrating the soft nature of polystyrene polymer with specific capture agents and surface structures. This study provides a potentially optimal candidate for a high-quality breast cancer-cell detection platform and will provide new prospects for designing cell-material interfaces for advanced cell-based biological studies and clinical applications in the future. Soft Material Helps Cancer-Cell Capture: Soft polystyrene (PS) polymer nanotube substrate has been developed to realize rapid and highly efficient breast cancer-cell capture from whole-blood samples with high cell viability, by integrating the soft nature of PS with specific capture agents and surface structures to mimic the cell microenvironment. It is anticipated that this soft material-based substrate will provide a potentially optimal candidate for high-quality breast cancer-cell capture and detection technologies, and open a new view to design cell-material interfaces for advanced cell-based diagnostic and therapeutic platforms. Materials that efficiently isolate cells from whole-blood samples have important diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Shutao Wang at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and co-workers have now devised soft substrates based on the polymer polystyrene that efficiently capture breast cancer cells. The researchers previously developed a three-dimensional cell-capture nanostructure comprising a silicon nanowire array coated with an antibody—anti-EpCAM—that detects the epithelial cell adhesion molecule overexpressed by many cancers. Now, inspired by the fact that cells and their environments are composed of soft materials—something that has led to soft polymers being exploited in other biological applications, including tissue engineering—Wang and co-workers have replaced the stiff nanowires of their cell-capturing substrate with soft polystyrene nanotubes. The resulting polystyrene/anti-EpCAM arrays are significantly more efficient than their silicon counterparts, rapidly detecting breast cancer cells. These findings point to softness as an important factor in cell capture and detection.