Advancements in diagnostic systems for metastatic cancer over the last few decades have played a significant role in providing patients with effective treatment by evaluating the characteristics of cancer cells. Despite the progress made in cancer prognosis, we still rely on the visual analysis of tissues or cells from histopathologists, where the subjectivity of traditional manual interpretation persists. This paper presents the development of a dual diagnosis and treatment tool using an in vitro acoustic tweezers platform with a 50 MHz ultrasonic transducer for label-free trapping and bursting of human breast cancer cells. For cancer cell detection and classification, the mechanical properties of a single cancer cell were quantified by single-beam acoustic tweezers (SBAT), a noncontact assessment tool using a focused acoustic beam. Cell-mimicking phantoms and agarose hydrogel spheres (AHSs) served to standardize the biomechanical characteristics of the cells. Based on the analytical comparison of deformability levels between the cells and the AHSs, the mechanical properties of the cells could be indirectly measured by interpolating the Young’s moduli of the AHSs. As a result, the calculated Young’s moduli, i.e., 1.527 kPa for MDA-MB-231 (highly invasive breast cancer cells), 2.650 kPa for MCF-7 (weakly invasive breast cancer cells), and 2.772 kPa for SKBR-3 (weakly invasive breast cancer cells), indicate that highly invasive cancer cells exhibited a lower Young’s moduli than weakly invasive cells, which indicates a higher deformability of highly invasive cancer cells, leading to a higher metastasis rate. Single-cell treatment may also be carried out by bursting a highly invasive cell with high-intensity, focused ultrasound.

过去几十年来，转移性癌症诊断系统的进步在通过评估癌细胞的特征为患者提供有效治疗方面发挥了重要作用。尽管在癌症预后方面取得了进展，但我们仍然依赖于组织病理学家对组织或细胞的视觉分析，传统人工解释的主观性仍然存在。本文介绍了一种双重诊断和治疗工具的开发，该工具使用体外声镊平台和 50 MHz 超声换能器，用于无标记捕获和爆裂人类乳腺癌细胞。对于癌细胞检测和分类，单个癌细胞的机械特性通过单束声镊 (SBAT) 进行量化，SBAT 是一种使用聚焦声束的非接触评估工具。细胞模拟体模和琼脂糖水凝胶球 (AHS) 用于标准化细胞的生物力学特性。基于单元和 AHS 之间变形水平的分析比较，可以通过插入 AHS 的杨氏模量间接测量单元的机械性能。结果，计算出的杨氏模量，即 MDA-MB-231（高侵袭性乳腺癌细胞）为 1.527 kPa，MCF-7（弱侵袭性乳腺癌细胞）为 2.650 kPa，SKBR-3（弱侵袭性乳腺癌细胞）为 2.772 kPa浸润性乳腺癌细胞），表明高浸润性癌细胞比弱浸润性细胞表现出更低的杨氏模量，这表明高浸润性癌细胞具有更高的变形能力，导致更高的转移率。