Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Measuring The Mechanical Properties Of Living Cells Using Atomic Force Microscopy, Nancy Burnham, Gawain Thomas, Terri Camesano, Qi Wen

Nancy A. Burnham

Mechanical properties of cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) play important roles in many biological processes including stem cell differentiation, tumor formation, and wound healing. Changes in stiffness of cells and ECM are often signs of changes in cell physiology or diseases in tissues. Hence, cell stiffness is an index to evaluate the status of cell cultures. Among the multitude of methods applied to measure the stiffness of cells and tissues, micro-indentation using an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) provides a way to reliably measure the stiffness of living cells. This method has been widely applied to characterize the micro-scale stiffness for …