The lotus leaf is a pioneer of self-cleaning, water-repellant engineering . Water droplets all but hover on its surface, whose unique texture traps air in its nanosized ridges and folds. Rice University bioengineers report harnessing the lotus effect to develop a system for culturing cancer cell clusters that can shed light on hard-to-study tumor properties.
The new zinc oxide-based culturing surface mimics the lotus leaf surface structure, providing a highly tunable platform for the high-throughput generation of three-dimensional nanoscale tumor models. The superhydrophobic array device (SHArD) designed by Rice bioengineer Michael King and collaborators can be used to create tunable, compact, physiologically relevant models for studying the progression of cancer, including metastasis ⎯ the stage in the disease when cancerous cells travel through the bloodstream from a primary tumor site to other parts of the body. "The study of metastasis ⎯ the leading cause of cancer deaths ⎯ poses a particular challenge in part due to the difficulty of developing accurate, high-throughput models," said King, who is corresponding author on a study published in ACS Nano that describes the new culturing platform.
"We hope this tool will unlock new knowledge about this problematic stage of the disease and help us identify ways to intervene in order to stop or prevent it from happening." Scientists and clinicians now rely on blood samples containing circulating tumor cells ⎯ a key marke.