Mechanics of multicellular spheroids

Multicellular aggregates, and specially spheroids, are a unique in vitro system to study the dynamics of multicellular 3D systems. We are studying the physics/mechanics of spheroid growth for both healthy and malignant cells. Our goal is to reveal how endogenous mechanical cues change from healthy to malignant tissues. To this end, we are using microdroplet techniques to quantify how cellular forces vary in space and time as the system grows.