Quantification of cell viability and rapid screening anti-cancer drug utilizing nanomechanical fluctuation
Abstract
Cancer is a serious threat to human health. Although numerous anti-cancer drugs are available clinically, many have shown toxic side effects due to poor tumor-selectivity, and reduced effectiveness due to cancers rapid development of resistance to treatment. The development of new highly efficient and practical methods to quantify cell viability and its change under drug treatment is thus of significant importance in both understanding of anti-cancer mechanism and anti-cancer drug screening. Here, we present an approach of utilizing a nanomechanical fluctuation based highly sensitive microcantilever sensor, which is capable of characterizing the viability of cells and quantitatively screening (within tens of minutes) their responses to a drug with the obvious advantages of a rapid, label-free, quantitative, noninvasive, real-time and in-situ assay. The microcantilever sensor operated in fluctuation mode was used in evaluating the paclitaxel effectiveness on breast cancer cell line MCF-7. This study demonstrated that the nanomechanical fluctuations of the microcantilever sensor are sensitive enough to detect the dynamic variation in cellular force which is provided by the cytoskeleton, using cell metabolism as its energy source, and the dynamic instability of microtubules plays an important role in the generation of the force. We propose that cell viability consists of two parts: biological viability and mechanical viability. Our experimental results suggest that paclitaxel has little effect on biological viability, but has a significant effect on mechanical viability. This new method provides a new concept and strategy for the evaluation of cell viability and the screening of anti-cancer drugs.
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The SMR passes single cells in suspension and produces a frequency shift proportional to cell buoyant mass.
“In short, single cells in suspension are passed through the SMR resulting in a frequency shift that is proportional to cell buoyant mass.”
From Drug sensitivity of single cancer cells is predicted by changes in mass accumulation rate (2016) · cites this paper as [15]
The SMR design and operation were described in earlier work.
“The design and operation of the SMR have been previously described13–15.”
From Drug sensitivity of single cancer cells is predicted by changes in mass accumulation rate (2016) · cites this paper as [15]
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Drug sensitivity of single cancer cells is predicted by changes in mass accumulation rate
Stevens, M. M., Maire, C. L., Chou, N., Murakami, M. A., Knoff, D. S., Kikuchi, Y., Kimmerling, R. J., Liu, H., Haidar, S., Calistri, N. L., et al. (2016) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/nbt.3697 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Wu, S., Liu, X., Zhou, X., Liang, X. M., Gao, D., Liu, H., Zhao, G., Zhang, Q., & Wu, X.
- Affiliations
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Liu, Hong
- Zhao, Gang
- Zhang, Qingchuan
- ORCID
- Venue
- Biosensors and Bioelectronics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-03
- Volume
- 77
- Pages
- 164-173
- ISSN
- 0956-5663 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1686927467
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 2.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Biosensors and Bioelectronics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (11502265, 11127201)
- Chinese National Key Technology R&D Program (2012BAK08B05)
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK2090050032)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Cellular Mechanics and Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced MEMS and NEMS Technologies
- Keywords
- cell viability quantification, microcantilever sensors, anticancer drug screening, paclitaxel, breast cancer cells, MCF-7 cells, microtubule dynamic instability, label-free biosensing
- MeSH terms
- Antineoplastic Agents, Biological Assay, Cell Survival, Dose-Response Relationship, Drug, Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor, Equipment Design, Humans, Sensitivity and Specificity, Stress, Mechanical, Reproducibility of Results, Equipment Failure Analysis, Nanotechnology, Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems, MCF-7 Cells
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