Spatial correlation of cell stiffness and traction forces in cancer cells measured with combined SICM and TFM.
Johannes RheinlaenderHannes WirbelTilman E SchäfferPublished in: RSC advances (2021)
The mechanical properties of cancer cells at the single-cell and the subcellular level might be the key for answering long-standing questions in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. However, the subcellular distribution of two main mechanical properties, cell stiffness and traction forces, has been investigated only rarely and qualitatively yet. Here, we present the first direct combination of scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) and traction force microscopy (TFM), which we used to identify a correlation between the local stiffness and the local traction force density in living cells. We found a correlation in normal breast epithelial cells, but no correlation in cancerous breast epithelial cells. This indicates that the interplay between cell stiffness and traction forces is altered in cancer cells as compared to healthy cells, which might give new insight in the research field of cancer cell mechanobiology.
Keyphrases
- single cell
- single molecule
- living cells
- rna seq
- high throughput
- high resolution
- cell therapy
- induced apoptosis
- stem cells
- fluorescent probe
- squamous cell carcinoma
- high speed
- papillary thyroid
- optical coherence tomography
- atomic force microscopy
- cell proliferation
- oxidative stress
- cell death
- bone marrow
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- electron microscopy