Measurement system for biomechanical properties of cell sheet

In this study, we present a new fixture (self-attachable fixture) and tensile test system for measuring mechanical properties of cell sheet. To evaluate strength of cell sheet, it is the most important to measure mechanical properties of tensile mode. However, there has been no study which measured the tensile mechanical properties of cell sheet, since it has been difficult to attach a cell sheet in the tensile test system owing to the structure of the conventional fixture, and there has been no tensile test system which had a measurement range that covered the tension force range of the cell sheets. Therefore, we have addressed these problems by developing a self-attachable fixture and a tensile test system. By using developed system, we measured mechanical properties (tension, stress and initial stiffness) C2C12 of cell sheet cultured in different recipe of culture medium. The initial stiffness of cell sheet cultured in culture medium without FBS had a tendency to become stiffer. This indicates that our new fixture and test system are applicable for evaluating mechanical properties of cell sheets.