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Force Spectroscopy on a Cell Drum: AFM Measurements on the Basolateral Side of Cells via Inverted Cell Cultures
journal contribution
posted on 2018-03-29, 00:00 authored by Joo Hyoung Kim, Kristina Riehemann, Harald FuchsThe
elasticity of a cell is one of the most critical measures of the difference
between cancerous cells and healthy cells: cancer cells tend to be
softer than healthy cells, and highly invasive cells tend to be more
elastic than less aggressive cells. In this work, we present the novel
“bottom-up” cell force spectroscopy method for the biophysical
characterization of cancer cells, in which an atomic force microscopy
(AFM) tip approach from the backside of a net-shaped culture substrate
exposing the basolateral cell membrane drum, and compare it with the
conventional “top-down” AFM measurements. We used two
different human pancreatic carcinoma cell lines, PaTu8988S and PaTu8988T.
Our bottom-up AFM tip approach provided a more statistically synchronized
distribution of the measured elastic moduli of the cells, demonstrating
its superior applicability for the clinical use of force spectroscopy,
which is not attainable with the conventional top-down AFM approach.