Biophysical interactions between pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell lines and pristine carbon nanotube substrates: Potential application for pancreatic cancer tissue engineering

Novel synthetic biomaterials able to support, direct tissue growth and retain cellular phenotypical properties are promising building blocks for the development of tissue engineering platforms for accurate and fast therapy screening for cancer. The aim of this study is to validate an aligned, pristine multi-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) platform for in vitro studies of pancreatic cancer as a systematic understanding of interactions between cells and these CNT substrates is lacking. Our results demonstrate that our CNT scaffolds -which are easily tuneable to form sheets/fibres- support growth, proliferation and spatial organisation of pancreatic cancer cells, indicating their great potential in cancer tissue engineering