Development of microstretching device to evaluate cell membrane strain field around sensing point of mechanical stimuli

In this study, we developed a novel cell-stretching device to evaluate the micro-strain field on a cell membrane in which a cellular response to a mechanical stimulus occurred. In a conventional cell-stretching device, rigid displacement of the cell body during the stretching operation is not negligible. This rigid displacement makes it difficult to observe the initial cellular response to stretching with high spatial and temporal resolution. A novel device is fabricated by applying the MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) technique, and consists of a transparent elastic microchamber and a microlinkage mechanism by which uniaxial stretch is applied to the microchamber. The microchamber and linkage mechanism are fabricated by micromolding and multiple exposure of photoresist, respectively. We demonstrated the applicability of the fabrication process that we proposed, and evaluated the performance of the microdevice prototype. As a result of operation tests, rigid displacement of the cell body during stretching was found to be well suppressed. This result indicated the potential of this device to be used to observe and evaluate the initial cellular response and micro-strain field on a cell membrane during uniaxial stretching.