ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Characterizing deformability and surface friction of cancer cells.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 163 papers.
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Who cites it
163 citing papers in PubMed, 362 citations in OpenAlex.
- Simulation-Based Microfluidic Deformation Mapping for Region-Dependent Apparent Young's Modulus Estimation of Single Cells.Biosensors · 2026Article
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- Capillary constrictions prime cancer cell tumorigenicity through PIEZO1.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Pathophysiological Associations and Measurement Techniques of Red Blood Cell Deformability.Biosensors · 2025Review
- A Microfluidic Approach for Assessing the Rheological Properties of Healthy Versus Thalassemic Red Blood Cells.Micromachines · 2025Article
- Characterization of cellular wound resistance in the giant ciliatebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Microfluidic technologies for enhancing the potency, predictability and affordability of adoptive cell therapies.Nature biomedical engineering · 2025Review
- Controlling fluid flow rate to separate leukocytes and cancer cells based on stiffness differences.Mikrochimica acta · 2025Article
- Frictiotaxis underlies focal adhesion-independent durotaxis.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Review
- Adhesion strength of tumor cells predicts metastatic disease in vivo.Cell reports · 2025Article
- Noninvasive characterization of oocyte deformability in microconstrictions.Science advances · 2025Article
- Cellular and Nuclear Forces: An Overview.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Microfluidic Technology for Measuring Mechanical Properties of Single Cells and Its Application.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Real-time viscoelastic deformability cytometry: High-throughput mechanical phenotyping of liquid and solid biopsies.Science advances · 2024Article
- Single-cell electro-mechanical shear flow deformability cytometry.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2024Article
- A combined electro-optical deformability micro-cytometer.RSC advances · 2024Article
- Stimulated Brillouin scattering flow cytometry.Biomedical optics express · 2024Article
- Deformation under flow and morphological recovery of cancer cells.Lab on a chip · 2024Article
103 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Metastasis requires the penetration of cancer cells through tight spaces, which is mediated by the physical properties of the cells as well as their interactions with the confined environment. Various microfluidic approaches have been devised to mimic traversal in vitro by measuring the time required for cells to pass through a constriction. Although a cell's passage time is expected to depend on its deformability, measurements from existing approaches are confounded by a cell's size and its frictional properties with the channel wall. Here, we introduce a device that enables the precise measurement of (i) the size of a single cell, given by its buoyant mass, (ii) the velocity of the cell entering a constricted microchannel (entry velocity), and (iii) the velocity of the cell as it transits through the constriction (transit velocity). Changing the deformability of the cell by perturbing its cytoskeleton primarily alters the entry velocity, whereas changing the surface friction by immobilizing positive charges on the constriction's walls primarily alters the transit velocity, indicating that these parameters can give insight into the factors affecting the passage of each cell. When accounting for cell buoyant mass, we find that cells possessing higher metastatic potential exhibit faster entry velocities than cells with lower metastatic potential. We additionally find that some cell types with higher metastatic potential exhibit greater than expected changes in transit velocities, suggesting that not only the increased deformability but reduced friction may be a factor in enabling invasive cancer cells to efficiently squeeze through tight spaces.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.