Mechanical fingerprints of pathological changes in tissue samples – Department of Biophysical Microstructures

Various research has demonstrated that mechanical properties of tissues can be correlated with the specific disease that could be grouped into diseases, in which mechanical properties:

(1) originate from obvious genetic mutations leading to impairments of cytoskeleton functioning (muscular dystrophy) or (2) constitute the manifestation of disease progression (e.g. cancer).

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a disease at which point mutation leads to a lack of dystrophin, a protein that participates in the link between actin filaments and cell membrane. As a consequence, a weakening of muscles is observed. The nanoscale measurements of mice mdx muscles demonstrated that their deformability is similar to that obtained after cytochalasin D treatment (an agent depolymerizing actin filaments).

Effect of cytochalasin D on mice muscle stiffness. Normalized Young’s modulus value distributions performed on thick longitudinal sections of (A) wild-type or (B) mdx mice muscles (black bars) are shown in comparison with those obtained from an adjacent section of the same muscle treated with cytochalasin D (grey bars). The distributions were fitted with Gaussian curves, where the centres of distribution denote Young’s modulus mean value (Puttini et al. Mol. Ther. 2009)

References:

S.Puttini, M.Lekka, D.Saugy, O.Dorchies, T.Incitti, U.Ruegg, I.Bozzoni, A.J.Kulik, N.Mermod – Atomic force microscopy assay of the elasticity of utrophin-expressing muscles – Mol. Therapy 17 (2009) 19-25.
S.Puttini, R.van Zwieten, D.Saugy, M.Lekka, F.Hogger, A.J.Kulik, N.Mermod – MAR-mediated integration of plasmid vectors for in vivo gene transfer and regulation – BMC Molecular Biology 14 (2013) 26
P.S. Iyer, L.Mavoungou, F.Ronzoni, J.Zemla, E.Schmid-Siegert, S.Antonini, O.Dorchies, M.Jaconi, M.Lekka, G.Messina, N.Mermod – Autologous cell therapy approach for Duchenne muscular dystrophy using PiggyBac transposons and mesoangioblasts – Molecular Therapy 26(4)(2018)1093-1108.

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