Culturing astrocytes on substrates that mimic brain tumors promotes enhanced mechanical forces

Substrate stiffness in nerve cells

“…Substrate stiffness has been shown to have a great influence on glial cell morphology. Astrocytes appear round and small on soft substrates (100-200 Pa) but show a rich morphology on stiffer substrates (7-11 kPa) [35][36][37][38]. With increasing substrate stiffness, the traction force, strain energy, and intercellular stress of astrocytes increase while cell velocities decrease [35].…”

“…Astrocytes appear round and small on soft substrates (100-200 Pa) but show a rich morphology on stiffer substrates (7-11 kPa) [35][36][37][38]. With increasing substrate stiffness, the traction force, strain energy, and intercellular stress of astrocytes increase while cell velocities decrease [35]. In the range of substrate stiffness from Then, the internal force is transmitted to the outside through the mechanosensitive signaling protein, generating the traction force (FT) to pull the substrate and move forward.…”

“…Astrocytes appear round and small on soft substrates (100–200 Pa) but show a rich morphology on stiffer substrates (7–11 kPa) [35–38]. With increasing substrate stiffness, the traction force, strain energy, and intercellular stress of astrocytes increase while cell velocities decrease [35]. In the range of substrate stiffness from 100 Pa to 10 kPa, astrocyte proliferation increases with increasing stiffness, with hyperplasia occurring >2 MPa.…”

Engineered cell culture microenvironments for mechanobiology studies of brain neural cells

“…The stiffness of the brain, measured by the Young’s modulus (also called the elastic modulus, i.e. the resistance of the material to elastic deformation), is quite heterogeneous, ranging between 0.1 and 1 kPa in healthy brain tissue ( Figure 1BI ) and reaching values of 10–16 kPa in diseased states ( Bizanti et al, 2021 ). This low stiffness results in part from the specific composition of the brain extracellular matrix, which is mainly made up of glycosaminoglycans (e.g., hyaluronic acid), proteoglycans (e.g., aggrecan), glycoproteins (e.g., tenascin-R) and low levels of fibrous proteins (e.g., collagen and fibronectin).…”

“…Substrate stiffness can also influence the morphology and reactive state of astrocytes. Human astrocytes exhibit an extended morphology with increased substrate stiffness, along with increased traction, strain energy and intracellular stress ( Bizanti et al, 2021 ). These results are in accordance with observations on rodent astrocytes.…”