原子力显微镜(AFM)由于具有纳米量级的空间分辨率和皮牛(pN)量级的力分辨率已经在活细胞和细胞组织超微结构的研究中取得重大进展, 该技术为细胞生物力学的研究提供了新方法。通过力曲线可以得到与单个细胞的力学性质相关的信息。细胞弹性的变化是生物细胞发生病变的特征之一。利用AFM研究各种细胞的弹性特性, 为疾病的早期诊断和治疗以及病理机制的研究提供了一种强有力的工具。本文主要综述了近些年用AFM技术研究疾病相关的细胞弹性特性的应用新进展, 如发现多种类型的癌细胞都比健康细胞软, 以及在相关血液性疾病(如冠状动脉疾病、高血压和糖尿病)中红细胞的弹性也发生了变化。这些特性可对疾病的辅助诊断提供参考, 为病理学和临床医学研究提供了新依据。

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has recently made a great progress in the study of ultramicrostructures including living cells and cell organelles at a nanometer-scale spatial resolution and pN-scale force sensitivity. Particularly, force spectroscopy is used for mapping mechanical properties of a single cell, providing information on cellular structures. The changes of cell elasticity is one of the characteristics of biological cell pathological changes. AFM will be a new method for cell biomechanics and its probing the changes of cell elasticity involved in cell pathology, providing apowerful tool for the human health, disease diagnosis, and treatment. Recent progresses on cell elasticity using AFM were reported in the paper. It was found that cultured cancer cells are elastically softer than healthy ones, and elasticity of local erythrocyte in blood-related diseases, such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus is distinguishing from the normal one. In the future, the mechanical signatures of the cells would be a powerful approach for detecting to detect cancer and disease diagnosis in the clinic.