title: Improved Measurement of Elastic Properties of Cells by Micropipette Aspiration and Its Application to Lymphocytes.
abstract: Mechanical deformability of cells is an important property for their function and development, as well as a useful marker of cell state. The classical technique of micropipette aspiration allows single-cell studies and we provide here a method to measure the two basic mechanical parameters, elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio. The proposed method, developed from finite-element analysis of micropipette aspiration experiments, may be implemented in future technologies for the automated measurement of mechanical properties of cells, based on the micropipette aspiration technique or on the cell transit through flow constrictions. We applied this method to measure the elastic parameters of lymphocytes, in which the mechanical properties depend on their activation state. Additionally, we discuss in this work the accuracy of previous models to estimate the elastic modulus of cells, in particular the analytical model by Theret et al., widely used in the field. We show the necessity of using an improved model, taking into account the finite size of the cells, to obtain new insights that may remain hidden otherwise.
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Esteban-Manzanares
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Blanca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: González-Bermúdez
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisiología Animal II, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cruces
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisiología Animal II, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Mónica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: De la Fuente
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Qingxuan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Gustavo V
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Guinea
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pérez-Rigueiro
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Elices
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Technology. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain. gustavo.plaza@upm.es.|Departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain. gustavo.plaza@upm.es.|Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Nano Science, School of Medicine, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, People's Republic of China. gustavo.plaza@upm.es.
authors.forename: Gustavo R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5555-5498
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Plaza
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D005260:Female; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D008213:Lymphocyte Activation; D008214:Lymphocytes / Q000737:chemistry*; D051379:Mice; D008813:Mice, Inbred ICR
keywords: Automatic digital analysis; Cell deformability; Finite-element analysis; Finite-size effect; Non-linear model; Poisson’s ratio; T cell; Young’s modulus