What can I do when my cells do not adhere or grow on a collagen hydrogel?

Some cell types might not adhere or grow on a standard collagen hydrogel (e.g., they remain rounded up). Depending on your cell type, these approaches can help promote cell attachment:

• Add a further coating protein (e.g., fibronectin or Matrigel) to your collagen gel during preparation. If your cells successfully adhered to or grew using a specific cell culture coating in past experiments, we recommend adding this coating protein to the gel matrix.
• Add the preferred coating protein for your cell type directly to the cell suspension to be seeded on the gel, incubate until the cells have attached, and then wash with medium to remove the coating protein.
• Try coating the collagen gel with a different coating protein after the gel has polymerized. Please note that not all coatings will adhere/bind to collagen.

Please note that we have not tested these approaches ourselves. We recommend testing these suggestions with a Free Sample of a suitable µ-Slide, such as the µ-Slide 15 Well 3D, which has 15 low-volume wells and allows for gel preparation without gel meniscus.

Read further: Anguiano M, Morales X, Castilla C, Pena AR, Ederra C, Martínez M, Ariz M, Esparza M, Amaveda H, Mora M, Movilla N, Aznar JMG, Cortés-Domínguez I, Ortiz-de-Solorzano C. The use of mixed collagen-Matrigel matrices of increasing complexity recapitulates the biphasic role of cell adhesion in cancer cell migration: ECM sensing, remodeling and forces at the leading edge of cancer invasion. PLoS One. 2020 Jan 16;15(1):e0220019. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220019.

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