Half-wet nanomechanical sensors for cellular dynamics investigations.

Autor: Conti M; University of Trieste, Department of Physics, PhD in Nanotechnology, 34100 Trieste, Italy; CNR-IOM, Istituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34149 Trieste, Italy. Electronic address: conti@iom.cnr.it., Andolfi L; CNR-IOM, Istituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34149 Trieste, Italy., Betz-Güttner E; University of Trieste, Department of Physics, PhD in Nanotechnology, 34100 Trieste, Italy; CNR-IOM, Istituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34149 Trieste, Italy., Zilio SD; CNR-IOM, Istituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34149 Trieste, Italy., Lazzarino M; CNR-IOM, Istituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34149 Trieste, Italy.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Biomaterials advances [Biomater Adv] 2023 Jan; Vol. 144, pp. 213222. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Nov 30.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bioadv.2022.213222
Abstrakt: Testing devices based on cell tracking are particularly interesting as diagnostic tools in medicine for antibiotics susceptibility testing and in vitro chemotherapeutic screening. In this framework, the application of nanomechanical sensors has attracted much attention, although some crucial aspects such as the effects of the viscous damping, when operating in physiological conditions environment, still need to be properly solved. To address this problem, we have designed and fabricated a nanomechanical force sensor that operates at the interface between liquid and air. Our sensor consists of a silicon chip including a 500 μm wide Si 3 N 4 suspended membrane where three rectangular silicon nitride cantilevers are defined by a lithographically etched gap. The cantilevers can be operated in air, fully immersed in a liquid environment and in half wetting condition, with one side in contact with the solution and the opposite one in air. The formation of a water meniscus in the gap prevents the leakage of medium to the opposite side, which remained dry and is used to reflect a laser to measure the cantilever deflection. This configuration enables to keep the cells in physiological environment while operating the sensor in dry conditions. The performance of the sensor has been applied to monitor the motion and measures the forces developed by migrating breast cancer cell. The functionalization of one side of the cantilever and the use of a purposely designed chamber of measurements enable the confinement of the cell only on one side of the cantilever. Our data demonstrate that this approach can distinguish the adhesion and contraction forces developed by different cell lines and may represents valuable tool for a fast and quantitative in-vitro screening of new chemotherapeutic drugs targeting cancer cell adhesion and motility.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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