Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Singapore

Mechanobiology of Disease

Poster Abstracts

25-POS Board 25 Solid-State Micropores for Rapid Investigation of Cancer Cell Mechanical Properties Waqas Ali 1 , Young-Tae Kim 1,2 , Samir Iqbal 1,2 . 1 University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA, 2 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA. Solid-state micropores were used to detect tumor cells to process whole blood and to detect tumor cells without any tagging. The micropore acted as an electromechanical transducer to differentiate tumor cells from the normal cells. The micropore data also distinguished one type of tumor cells from the other types of tumors. The electrical signals were seen to be characteristic of the cell properties. The principle of measurement was like a coulter counter but the micropores were micromachined in a 200 nm thin membrane and the measurement setup could detect changes in ionic current as small as picoamperes. The electrical signals stemmed from the cells’ distinct properties (shape, size, elasticity, stiffness, motility, etc.) and thus the translocation profiles of cells that were either small or were more elastic and flexible caused electrical pulses that were shorter in widths and amplitudes. The larger cells or those with lesser elasticity and flexibility resulted in deeper and wider pulses. The investigations have been done on lung cancer cells (non-small cell lung cancer cell lines), metastatic and non-metastatic breast cancer cells, metastatic primary renal cancer cells and primary human glioblastoma cells. The cells translocation through micropores of relevant sizes caused electrical pulses that could clearly distinguish particular cancer cells from others. The transformation of difference in cell properties into differences in electrical profile (i.e. difference in peak amplitude and translocation time) with this micropore electromechanical transducer can be used to differentiate many types of cancer cells before and after treatment. The solid-sate micropore device can process the whole blood sample of cancer patient without any pre-processing requirements and is ideal for point-of- care applications.

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