Designing implantable cancer traps: contribution of marine-derived biomaterials

During metastasis, cancer cells may escape from the primary tumor and invade the surrounding stroma. At this stage, the number of cancer cells that invade the microvasculature remain primarily unnoticed with the potential impact on cancer patient prognosis. To accelerate the early detection of metastatic cancer cells, one solution is to engineer implantable biomaterial-based systems that work as “sentinels” capable of explicitly attracting and capturing these cancerous cells and avoiding their uncontrolled dissemination. The trapping stimuli may be of different origin, namely (bio) chemical-based (i.e., chemoattractant) or chemical-free (i.e., topological and physical entrapment) and could be integrated within the biomaterial. These so-called biomaterials-based cancer traps may permit to attract, capture, and profiling of cancer cells providing essential information about the primary tumor. Further, they may also enable the precise treatment or direct elimination of the cancerous cells [1]. The selection of the biomaterial is therefore critical in terms of bioactivity, biocompatibility, and/or degradability, among other essential properties. In this regard, marine-derived biomaterials may offer promising properties to conventional alternatives by improving their biocompatibility, stability, and/or their anti-cancer cancer activity, and therefore, be a realistic choice for the design of functional cancer traps [2]. Herein, we describe the potential use of this type of biomaterials for the efficient detection, capture, and elimination of cancer cells.