Metastasis, cancer’s movement and spread, often determines disease severity. The way cancer cells move is influenced by the stiffness and structure of tumor cells and their surrounding environments.  

However, current methods for studying cancer cell migration are limited by materials that can reproduce only a few conditions in mostly 2D environments.  

This study used advanced 3D printing techniques to create highly flexible microscale scaffolds (blue), with structures up to 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair, that can be printed at the same scale as cells (orange). The scaffolds will help labs reproduce more realistic conditions to evaluate cell behavior during metastasis, with the goal of controlling their behavior in 3D space.