Technological advancements in characterizing single cell's stiffness properties- A review

Biophysical properties of living cells certainly play important roles for intra and intercellular biological events. However, conventional population approaches obscured cells heterogeneity and assume all cells are similar. With the introduction of single cell analysis, this limitation is slowly rectified by defining crucial methods to further revealing cell-to-cell variability. Research in biomechanics leads to better elucidation of cellular and molecular changes due to disease progression i.e diseased cell exhibits different mechanical properties as compared to healthy ones. This paper highlights on various technological advancements available for single cell stiffness characterizations and analytical comparison of the reviewed methods will be thoroughly discussed. In addition, several applications intended for early disease detection were presented.