FIGURE 5:

IT-AFM and RT-DC. Elastic modulus was estimated on cells attached to (A) PDMS (empty bars) and glass (dashed bars). The analyzed model cell pairs display similar mechanical features on both substrates but different trends for the two model cell lines. (B) In turn, the mechanical properties of free-floating cells were estimated using RT-DC. These experiments reveal higher compliance of the highly metastatic cells compared with the parental cell lines, although this is significant only for the SaOs-2/LM5 model pair. (C) In accordance with the morphological data, the volume of the measured cells was significantly smaller with highly metastatic potential for both model lines. *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001; ****, p < 0.0001; n.s., not significant.