Probing mechanical properties of Jurkat cells under the effect of ART using oscillating optical tweezers

Acute lymphoid leukemia is a common type of blood cancer and chemotherapy is the initial treatment of choice. Quantifying the effect of a chemotherapeutic drug at the cellular level plays an important role in the process of the treatment. In this study, an oscillating optical tweezer was employed to characterize the frequency-dependent mechanical properties of Jurkat cells exposed to the chemotherapeutic agent, artesunate (ART). A motion equation for a bead bound to a cell was applied to describe the mechanical characteristics of the cell cytoskeleton. By comparing between the modeling results and experimental results from the optical tweezer, the stiffness and viscosity of the Jurkat cells before and after the ART treatment were obtained. The results demonstrate a weak power-law dependency of cell stiffness with frequency. Furthermore, the stiffness and viscosity were increased after the treatment. Therefore, the cytoskeleton cell stiffness as the well as power-law coefficient can provide a useful insight into the chemo-mechanical relationship of drug treated cancer cells and may serve as another tool for evaluating therapeutic performance quantitatively.