Mechanical anisotropy and adaptation of metastatic cells probed by magnetic microbeads

摘要

Metastatic cells have the ability to break through the basal lamina, enter the blood vessels, circulate through the vasculature, exit at distant sites, and form secondary tumors. This multi-step process, therefore, clearly indicates the inherent ability of metastatic cells to sense, process, and adapt to the mechanical forces in different surrounding environments. We describe a magnetic probing device that is useful in characterizing the mechanical properties of cells along arbitrary two-dimensional directions. Magnetic force, with the advantages of biocompatibility and specificity, was produced by magnetic poles placed in an octupole configuration and applied to fibronectin-coated magnetic microbeads attached on cell membrane. Cell deformation in response to the applied force was then recorded through the displacement of the microbeads. The motion of the beads was measured by computer processing the video images acquired by a high-speed CMOS camera. Rotating force vectors with constant magnitude while pointing to directions of all 360 degrees were applied to study the mechanical anisotropy of metastatic breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231. The temporal changes in magnitude and directionality of the cellular responses were then analyzed to investigate the cellular adaptation to force stimulation. This probing technology thus has the potential to provide us a better understanding of the mechano-signatures of cells.