Improved Measurement of Elastic Properties of Cells by Micropipette Aspiration and Its Application to Lymphocytes

Resumen

Mechanical deformability of cells is an important property for their function and in development, and a useful marker of cell state. Moreover measuring mechanical properties of cells has been proven useful in preclinical studies and in clinical practice. We provide here a method to measure the two parameters, elastic modulus and Poisson coefficient, of the cellular material under the approximation of homogeneous isotropic linear elasticity. The proposed method is based on the analysis of micropipetteaspiration experiments. We show the successful application of this procedure to measure the elastic parameters of lymphocytes, for which the mechanical properties depend on the activation state, and their measurement would be useful in clinical studies and clinical practice. The method will be valuable to be implemented in future technologies, based on the micropipette aspiration technique, for the automated measurement of mechanical properties of cells.