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REVIEW article
Front. Mater.
Sec. Biomaterials and Bio-Inspired Materials
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmats.2025.1492438
This article is part of the Research Topic Advanced biomaterial platforms for tumor microenvironment modeling View all 3 articles
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Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases despite aggressive therapeutics. This is due in part to the evolving tumor microenvironment (TME), which provide tumor supportive cues that promote tumor adaptation and progression. Emerging studies highlight the significant role of the biophysical characteristics in the TME in modulating all aspects of cancer aggressive and spread. With the advance of bioengineering platforms, deeper investigations into the impact of these biophysical features on cancer progression are being conducted with a growing appreciation of the intratumoral compression that underlie many of the biophysical changes. Intratumoral compression emerges early in tumor development and increases in magnitude as the tumor rapidly expands against itself and its surrounding tissue. This stress has effects on both the cancer cells and biophysical aspects of the TME, including hypoxia, shear stress, extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, and substrate stiffness. This creates a physically dense, pro-malignant environment that can both promote metastatic phenotypes and spread but also present biophysical barriers for immune cell infiltration. This review will analyze the effect of compressive stress on the TME, cancer cells, and on confined migration of cancer and immune populations.
Keywords: mechanobiology, Tumor Microenvironment, bioengineered platforms, Microfluidics, Solid stress, Cancer
Received: 06 Sep 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Johnson, Froman-Glover, Mistry, Yaddanapudi and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Kavitha Yaddanapudi, University of Louisville, Louisville, United States
Joseph Chen, University of Louisville, Louisville, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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