ArticleeLife2020
Collective forces of tumor spheroids in three-dimensional biopolymer networks.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 42 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Engineering human multi-organ tissue chip niches for drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity prediction.Nature biomedical engineering · 2026Review
- Phosphorylated HPV‑16 E7 disrupts planar cell polarity in cervical cancer cells through vangl1 dysregulation.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Invasion dynamics of multifocal breast tumor spheroids in three-dimensional extracellular matrix.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Vimentin promotes collective cell migration through collagen networks via increased matrix remodeling and spheroid fluidity.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Cellular Snowballing: Cell Adhesion and Migration Drive the Self-Assembly of Cell-Microgel Biohybrid Spheroids.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- A vertically integrated system for tracking and assessing cell-cycle-aware phenotypes under confinement.APL bioengineering · 2026Article
- Mapping Collective Forces of Lung Cancer Spheroids Using Traction Force Microscopy.Biotechnology and bioengineering · 2026Article
- Microphysiological systems for metastasis research: a stepwise approach.Cellular oncology (Dordrecht, Netherlands) · 2025Review
- Mechanical Signaling: Molecular Mechanisms, Biological Functions, Diseases, and Therapeutic Targets.MedComm · 2025Review
- Bioengineering Stem Cell-Derived Glioblastoma Organoids: A Comprehensive Review.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Unlocking the therapeutic potential of cellular mechanobiology.Science advances · 2025Review
- Expression of vimentin intermediate filaments in epithelial cells promotes cell migration and cell matrix interaction in 3D.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mechanical cues guide the formation and patterning of 3D spheroids in fibrous environments.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Enhanced extracellular matrix remodeling due to embedded spheroid fluidization.New journal of physics · 2025Article
- A Benzodiazepine-Derived Molecule That Interferes with the Bio-Mechanical Properties of Glioblastoma-Astrocytoma Cells Altering Their Proliferation and Migration.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Insights gained from computational modeling of YAP/TAZ signaling for cellular mechanotransduction.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Review
- 3D Traction Force Microscopy in Biological Gels: From Single Cells to Multicellular Spheroids.Annual review of biomedical engineering · 2024Review
- Deformable microlaser force sensing.Light, science & applications · 2024Article
- Characterization of two different alginate-based bioinks and the influence of melanoma growth within.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Different contractility modes control cell escape from multicellular spheroids and tumor explants.APL bioengineering · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We describe a method for quantifying the contractile forces that tumor spheroids collectively exert on highly nonlinear three-dimensional collagen networks. While three-dimensional traction force microscopy for single cells in a nonlinear matrix is computationally complex due to the variable cell shape, here we exploit the spherical symmetry of tumor spheroids to derive a scale-invariant relationship between spheroid contractility and the surrounding matrix deformations. This relationship allows us to directly translate the magnitude of matrix deformations to the total contractility of arbitrarily sized spheroids. We show that our method is accurate up to strains of 50% and remains valid even for irregularly shaped tissue samples when considering only the deformations in the far field. Finally, we demonstrate that collective forces of tumor spheroids reflect the contractility of individual cells for up to 1 hr after seeding, while collective forces on longer timescales are guided by mechanical feedback from the extracellular matrix.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.