Harnessing the power of physicochemical material property screening to direct breast epithelial and breast cancer cells

Understanding cell-material interactions is crucial for advancing biomedical applications, influencing cellular behavior and medical device performance. Material properties can be manipulated to direct cell responses, benefiting applications from regenerative medicine to implantable devices such as silicone breast implants. Knowledge about the interaction differences between healthy and cancer cells with implants may guide implant design to more precisely influence cell adhesion and proliferation of healthy cells while inhibiting cancer cells, tailoring outcomes to specific cellular responses. To show-case this potential, breast epithelial cells and breast cancer cells were investigated regarding their interaction with a broad range of combined physicochemical properties. This study employed a silicone-based high-throughput screening method utilizing Double Orthogonal Gradients (DOGs) to investigate the influence of topography, stiffness, and wettability on breast epithelial cells (MCF10a) and breast cancer cells (MCF7). Results show distinct cellular responses, including decreased proliferation rates in both MCF10a and MCF7 cells with the introduction of surface topography and the dominant influence of wettability on cell adhesion, proliferation, and cluster formation. The screening identified specific regions of interest (ROIs) where MCF10a cell proliferation outperformed MCF7 cells and that topography inhibits cluster formation (tumorigenesis), offering potential prospects for the creation of novel implant surfaces.