Astrocytes are essential to brain homeostasis and their dysfunction can have devastating consequences on human quality of life. Such deleterious effects are generally due in part to changes that occur at the cellular level, which may be biochemical or biomechanical in nature. One biomechanical change that can occur is a change in tissue stiffness. Brain tumors are generally associated with increased brain tissue stiffness, but the impact increased tissue stiffness has on astrocyte biomechanical behavior is poorly understood. Therefore, in this study we cultured human astrocytes on flexible substrates with stiffness that mimicked the healthy human brain (1 kPa), meningioma (4 kPa), and glioma (11 kPa) and investigated astrocyte biomechanical behavior by measuring cell-substrate tractions, strain energies, cell-cell intercellular stresses, and cellular velocities. In general, tractions, intercellular stresses, and strain energy was observed to increase as a function of increased substrate stiffness, while cell velocities were observed to decrease with increased substrate stiffness. We believe this study will be of great importance to the fields of brain pathology and brain physiology.

星形胶质细胞对大脑稳态至关重要，它们的功能障碍会对人类的生活质量产生破坏性后果。这种有害影响通常部分是由于在细胞水平上发生的变化，这可能是生化或生物力学性质的。一种可能发生的生物力学变化是组织硬度的变化。脑肿瘤通常与脑组织硬度增加有关，但组织硬度增加对星形胶质细胞生物力学行为的影响知之甚少。因此，在本研究中，我们在具有模拟健康人脑 (1 kPa)、脑膜瘤 (4 kPa) 和神经胶质瘤 (11 kPa) 的刚度的柔性基质上培养人类星形胶质细胞，并通过测量细胞基质牵引力、应变来研究星形胶质细胞的生物力学行为。能量，细胞间细胞压力，和细胞速度。一般来说，观察到牵引力、细胞间应力和应变能随着基材刚度的增加而增加，而细胞速度随着基材刚度的增加而降低。我们相信这项研究将对脑病理学和脑生理学领域具有重要意义。