ArticleJournal of visualized experiments : JoVE2013
Measuring the mechanical properties of living cells using atomic force microscopy.
Article in Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 79 papers.
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Who cites it
79 citing papers in PubMed, 159 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acoustically driven micro/nanobubbles: from fundamental mechanisms to biomedical applications.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2026Review
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- Characterisation of cuticle mechanical properties: analysing stiffness in layered living systems to understand surface buckling patterns.Soft matter · 2025Article
- B cell mechanobiology in health and disease: emerging techniques and insights into therapeutic responses.FEBS letters · 2025Review
- Nanomechanical characterization of soft nanomaterial using atomic force microscopy.Materials today. Bio · 2025Review
- Tissue-dependent mechanosensing by cells derived from human tumors.npj biological physics and mechanics · 2025Article
- Mechanical signatures in cancer metastasis.npj biological physics and mechanics · 2025Review
- Multi-Scale Robotics: A Numerical Investigation on Mobile Micro-Tweezers for Micro-Manipulation with Extreme Requirements.Micromachines · 2024Article
- High throughput cell mechanotyping of cell response to cytoskeletal modulations using a microfluidic cell deformation system.Microfluidics and nanofluidics · 2024Article
- Optical tweezers in biomedical research - progress and techniques.Journal of medicine and life · 2024Review
- Investigation of Cell Mechanics and Migration on DDR2-Expressing Neuroblastoma Cell Line.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Pulmonary surfactant and prostaglandin EPhysiological reports · 2024Article
- Impact of stroma remodeling on forces experienced by cancer cells and stromal cells within a pancreatic tumor tissue.Biomedical engineering online · 2024Article
- Size Matters: Rethinking Hertz Model Interpretation for Cell Mechanics Using AFM.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- The inactivation ofiScience · 2024Article
- The Nanomechanical Properties of CLL Cells Are Linked to the Actin Cytoskeleton and Are a Potential Target of BTK Inhibitors.HemaSphere · 2023Article
- Article
- Nanomechanical Characterization of Ovarian Cancer Cell Lines as a Marker of Response to 2c Treatment.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Characterization of Biocompatibility of Functional Bioinks for 3D Bioprinting.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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 a variety of materials ranging from metal surfaces to soft biological tissues and cells. The basic principle of this method is to indent a cell with an AFM tip of selected geometry and measure the applied force from the bending of the AFM cantilever. Fitting the force-indentation curve to the Hertz model for the corresponding tip geometry can give quantitative measurements of material stiffness. This paper demonstrates the procedure to characterize the stiffness of living cells using AFM. Key steps including the process of AFM calibration, force-curve acquisition, and data analysis using a MATLAB routine are demonstrated. Limitations of this method are also discussed.
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Registered trials
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.