The effects of cell size, shape and deformability on cellular function have long been a topic of interest. Recently, mechanical phenotyping technologies capable of analysing large numbers of cells in real time have become available. This has important implications for biology and medicine, especially haemato‐oncology and immunology, as immune cell mechanical phenotyping, immunologic function, and malignant cell transformation are closely linked and potentially exploitable to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics. In this review, we introduce the technologies used to analyse cellular mechanical properties and review emerging findings following the advent of high throughput deformability cytometry. We largely focus on cells from the myeloid lineage, which are derived from the bone marrow and include macrophages, granulocytes and erythrocytes. We highlight advances in mechanical phenotyping of cells in suspension that are revealing novel signatures of human blood diseases and providing new insights into pathogenesis of these diseases. The contributions of mechanical phenotyping of cells in suspension to our understanding of drug mechanisms, identification of novel therapeutics and monitoring of treatment efficacy particularly in instances of haematologic diseases are reviewed, and we suggest emerging topics of study to explore as high throughput deformability cytometers become prevalent in laboratories across the globe.

中文翻译：

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骨髓细胞的机制

细胞大小、形状和变形能力对细胞功能的影响长期以来一直是人们感兴趣的话题。最近，能够实时分析大量细胞的机械表型技术已经可用。这对生物学和医学，尤其是血液肿瘤学和免疫学具有重要意义，因为免疫细胞机械表型、免疫功能和恶性细胞转化密切相关，并且有可能被开发用于开发新的诊断和治疗方法。在这篇综述中，我们介绍了用于分析细胞机械特性的技术，并回顾了高通量可变形细胞术出现后的新发现。我们主要关注髓系细胞，这些细胞来自骨髓，包括巨噬细胞、粒细胞和红细胞。我们强调了悬浮细胞机械表型分析的进展，这些进展揭示了人类血液疾病的新特征，并为这些疾病的发病机制提供了新的见解。回顾了悬浮细胞的机械表型对我们理解药物机制、识别新疗法和监测治疗效果的贡献，特别是在血液疾病的情况下，我们建议随着高通量可变形细胞仪的流行而探索新的研究主题在全球实验室。