TY - JOUR T1 - Traction force screening enabled by compliant PDMS elastomers JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/162206 SP - 162206 AU - Haruka Yoshie AU - Newsha Koushki AU - Rosa Kaviani AU - Kavitha Rajendran AU - Quynh Dang AU - Amjad Husain AU - Sean Yao AU - Chuck Li AU - John K Sullivan AU - Magali Saint-Geniez AU - Ramaswamy Krishnan AU - Allen J Ehrlicher Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/11/162206.abstract N2 - Acto-myosin contractility is an essential element of many aspects of cellular biology, and manifests as traction forces that cells exert on their surroundings. The central role of these forces makes them a novel principal therapeutic target in diverse diseases. This requires accurate and higher capacity measurements of traction forces; however, existing methods are largely low throughput, limiting their utility in broader applications. To address this need, we employ Fourier-transform traction force microscopy in a parallelized 96-well format, which we refer to as contractile force screening (CFS).Critically, rather than the frequently employed hydrogel polyacrylamide (PAA), we fabricate these plates using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) rubber. Key to this approach is that the PDMS used is very compliant, with a lower-bound Young’s modulus of approximately 0.7 kPa. We subdivide these monolithic substrates spatially into biochemically independent wells, creating a uniform multiwell platform for traction force screening. We demonstrate the utility and versatility of this platform by quantifying the compound and dose-dependent contractility responses of human airway smooth muscle cells and retinal pigment epithelial cells. ER -