Mechanical Response of Embryonic Stem Cells Using Haptics-Enabled Atomic Force Microscopy

Mechanical manipulation and characterization of biological cells is currently one of the most exciting research areas in the field of medical robotics applied to cellular level interactions. While biologists are able to ascertain the change in cell status visually based on mRNA or proteins markers, it is often qualitative and difficult to quantitatively define the outcome of a cell progression during differentiation. Consequently, we propose to develop a haptics-enabled atomic force microscopy system to mechanically manipulate and characterize an individual cell. The haptic feedback interface proposed in this paper comprises of a PHANTOM haptic feedback device combined with the atomic force microscope (AFM). The system has the capability of measuring forces in nN range and provides a haptic display of the cell indentation forces in real time. We conducted studies on mouse embryonic stein cells (mESC) and our experimental results indicate that the mechanical property of undifferentiated mESC differs from differenttiated mESC.