Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 13, 2020 - September 16, 2020
The cells in living tissue change not only their proliferation and motility, but also their mechanical properties in response to external mechanical stimuli. The mechanical properties of the cells and their adhesion strength with the extracellular matrix are extremely important in regenerating of load-bearing biological tissues such as blood vessels, bones, and ligaments. On these backgrounds, a micro tensile tester for investigating the mechanical properties of isolated cells was developed in our laboratory. However, the tester requires many manual operations for force-deformation analysis resulting a large time consumption. Therefore, in this study, we developed a micro-tensile tester capable of in situ measurement of force applied to the cells and their deformation by using image-based real-time analysis of deflection of a micro-glass needle attached to the specimen cells. Using this tester, we measured the tensile stiffness of normal vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and cervical cancer HeLa cells and their adhesion strength to the substrate. We found that both whole cell stiffness and surface stiffness of the cells were larger in VSMCs than in HeLa cells, and these differences also directly affected the adhesion strength of the cells.
