In vitro cell culture and cell-based assay are recognized as important contributors to persistent failures to translate promising preclinical drug candidates into clinical success. A cell culture device should not only allow the cell survival and growth, but allows the cells to express the same characteristics that they have in vivo. And in vivo, cells are parts of “soft” organs where they receive and interpret biochemical signals but also physicals signals, which they are sensitive to 1.
Cells sense and respond to matrix stiffness, an effect named mechano-sensing. The mechanical properties of the micro-environment deeply impact cell behaviour, including transcriptional regulation3, protein synthesis4, endocytosis5, and malignant progression6. The failures of standard culture dishes to maintain the phenotype of many primary cells, or by appearing as wrong predictors to translate promising in vitro results into in vivo clinical and industrial models and clinical success support the evidence than these standard tools have now reached their limits.
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