Progress in measuring the mechanical properties of clinical primary cells using atomic force microscopy

Abstract

The advent of atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides a novel instrument for label-free measuring the mechanical properties of single living cells under near-physiological conditions. Since the mid-1990s, researchers have used AFM to investigate the mechanical properties of cells with impressive results and demonstrated that cell mechanics is a new label-free biomarker which can effectively indicate the changes of cellular physiological states, improving our understanding of cancers and simultaneously promoting the development of cell biomechanics. However, current AFM single-cell mechanical assays are commonly performed on cell lines cultured in vitro . Due to the huge difference between in vitro and in vivo environments, the results acquired from cell lines cannot completely reflect the real situations in the body. Especially in the era of precision medicine, we need to test and analyze the primary cells from patients to achieve personalized diagnosis and treatment. Hence, developing methods that can directly detect the mechanical properties of primary cells (cancerous cells and normal cells) from clinical patients is of potential significance in translational medicine. In this paper, based on the authors’ own research in applying AFM to measure and characterize the mechanical properties of lymphoma patient cells, the principle and method of measuring the mechanical properties of cells by AFM is presented, then the recent progress in measuring the mechanical properties of primary cells by AFM is summarized, and finally the challenges are discussed.