Substrate viscosity impairs temozolomide-mediated inhibition of glioblastoma cells' growth

Beyond stiffness: deciphering the role of viscoelasticity in cancer evolution and treatment response

“…However, they often need modifications or must be combined with natural polymers to elicit biological activity [121]. Within the reviewed literature, synthetic hydrogels can be found unmodified [122][123][124][125], modified with RGD containing peptides [126], functionalized with type I collagen [127,128], and forming synthetic-natural hydrogel hybrids (PEG-chitosan, where PEG is added to modify the viscoelastic properties of chitosan [129]; and PEG-collagen, where collagen is added to provide cell adhesive cues [130]). Although not classified as a hydrogel, the biocompatible polymer P(CL-co-DLLA) was used to study the effect of matrix viscoelasticity on breast cancer (coated with fibronectin to enhance cell adhesion) [131][132][133] and lung cancer [134,135].…”

“…However, because Matrigel was present at a constant concentration in all formulations, the variation in viscoelastic properties was solely due to changes in alginate molecular weight and calcium concentration. Cieśluk et al [122], Charrier et al [124], and Mandal et al [123] all prepared elastic polyacrylamide (PAA) networks that were made viscoelastic by entrapping slowly relaxing linear PAA in the networks. This was achieved by adding already crosslinked linear PAA to the polymerization reaction between acrylamide and bis-acrylamide to yield the PAA network.…”

“…Glioblastoma. Cieśluk et al [122] studied the effect of increased substrate viscosity on the behavior of glioblastoma cells treated with the chemotherapy drug temozolomide. Untreated cells showed increased spread area on viscoelastic substrates, but proliferation was similar on elastic and viscoelastic substrates.…”