Collagen ultrastructural symmetry and its malignant alterations in human breast cancer revealed by polarization-resolved second-harmonic generation microscopy

Several specific alterations of the extracellular matrix can be considered a distinctive hallmark of cancer. In particular, a different morphology of the collagen scaffold is frequently found within the peritumoural environment. In this study, we report about a significant difference in the ultrastructural organization of collagen at the supra-molecular level between the perilesional scaffold and the tumour area in human breast carcinoma samples. In particular, we demonstrated that polarization-resolved second-harmonic generation (P-SHG) microscopy is able to link the altered collagen architecture at the ultrastructural level found in perilesional tissue with a different organization of collagen fibrils at the molecular level.