Atomic force microscopy in disease-related studies: Exploring tissue and cell mechanics

Despite significant progress in human medicine, certain diseases remain challenging to promptly diagnose and treat. Hence, the imperative lies in the development of more exhaustive criteria and tools. Tissue and cellular mechanics exhibit distinctive traits in both normal and pathological states, suggesting that force represents a promising and distinctive target for disease diagnosis and treatment. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) holds great promise as a prospective clinical medical device due to its capability to concurrently assess surface morphology and mechanical characteristics of biological specimens within a physiological setting. This review presents a comprehensive examination of the operational principles of AFM and diverse mechanical models, focusing on its applications in investigating tissue and cellular mechanics associated with prevalent diseases. The findings from these studies lay a solid groundwork for potential clinical implementations of AFM.Research HighlightsBy examining the surface morphology and assessing tissue and cellular mechanics of biological specimens in a physiological setting, AFM shows promise as a clinical device to diagnose and treat challenging diseases. In addition to biochemical markers widely used in clinical practice, the morphological characteristics and mechanical parameters of biological samples measured by atomic force microscopy also change under disease conditions, which is expected to be an emerging target for disease diagnosis and treatment.image

Automated summary

Atomic force microscopy shows promise as a clinical device to diagnose and treat challenging diseases by examining the surface morphology and assessing tissue and cellular mechanics of biological specimens in a physiological setting.