Abstract
Metastatic cancer cells are known to have a smaller cell stiffness than healthy cells because the small stiffness is beneficial for passing through the extracellular matrix when the cancer cells instigate a metastatic process. Here we developed a simple and handy microfluidic system to assess metastatic capacity of the cancer cells from a mechanical point of view. A tapered microchannel was devised through which a cell was compressed while passing. Two metastasis B16 melanoma variants (B16-F1 and B16-F10) were examined. The shape recovery process of the cell from a compressed state was evaluated with the Kelvin–Voigt model. The results demonstrated that the B16-F10 cells showed a larger time constant of shape recovery than B16-F1 cells, although no significant difference in the initial strain was observed between B16-F1 cells and B16-F10 cells. We further investigated effects of catechin on the cell deformability and found that the deformability of B16-F10 cells was significantly decreased and became equivalent to that of untreated B16-F1 cells. These results addressed the utility of the present system to handily but roughly assess the metastatic capacity of cancer cells and to investigate drug efficacy on the metastatic capacity.
Highlights
Metastasis is the spread of cancer cells from the primary site of origin to other sites of the body
The microfluidic system proposed here is simple, but its use is not limited to screening of metastatic cells, it has the potential to be used in many areas of medicine other than cancer diagnostics
The mechanism of how catechin brings a change in the viscosity of cancer cells is unclear, these results suggest that it would be possible to evaluate drug efficacy, at least in highly metastatic cancer cells, using the shape recovery time constant τ
Summary
Metastasis is the spread of cancer cells from the primary site of origin to other sites of the body. Remmerbach et al [11] measured the compliance of cells from cell lines and primary samples of healthy donors and cancer patients using a microfluidic optical stretcher They found that cancer cells were on average 3.5 times more compliant than those of healthy donors. It was reported that the more motile and metastatic cancer cells were, the softer they were, indicating that nanomechanical stiffness was inversely correlated with the migration potential of the cancer cell [13,14]. The conventional methods of mechanical tests such as atomic force microscopy, optical tweezers, and micropipette aspiration are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often require difficult manipulation and mastery skills they give relatively accurate data [18]. In order to use the cell stiffness as a biomarker of the metastatic potential of cancer cells in clinical practice, more viable methods are demanded
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