In recent years, respiratory diseases have emerged as a leading cause of mortality across the globe. In the United States alone respiratory diseases are the fourth leading cause of deaths annually. Moreover, with the rapid increase of industrialization and urbanization, the occurrences of respiratory diseases are expected to remain high with strong chances of increasing in the future. To ameliorate the epidemic of respiratory disease, it is first important to understand its underlying mechanisms. Respiratory research studies in animals have elucidated the chronological order of the pathological events and systemic responses inside the lung, but understanding the response of individual cell types inside the lung is necessary to outline the initiators and mediators of the pathological events. Many research studies have aimed to understand the behavior of individual cell types, from the lung, under different pathological conditions specific to the respiratory system. However, the cell culture systems used in most of these studies were limited by the absence of the dynamic cell growth environment present in actual lung tissues. The lung exists in a mechanically active environment, where different amounts of circumferential and longitudinal expansion and contraction occur during breathing movements. Thus, simulating the biomechanical environment in in vitro cell culture models may improve the cellular functionality and the outcome of the research studies. Moreover, the stimulation of biomechanical forces in in vitro cell cultures provides the advantage of mimicking the mechanical environment, related to different pathological conditions. In our study we used a dynamic in vitro cell culture system capable of implementing cyclic equibiaxial deformation in cell monolayers to stimulate different biomechanical environments similar to conditions inside the lung. The dynamic cell growth condition was used to determine the effects of ventilator-induced lung injury and nano-material/pollutant exposure in A549 cell cultures. Examples of such pollutants are diesel particulate matter, multi-walled carbon nanotubes, and single-walled carbon nanotubes. Our results indicated that the dynamic cell growth condition specific to ventilator induced lung injury facilitated an increase in inflammatory and tissue remodeling activities in A549 cells. Under the nano-material/pollutant exposure assessment studies, the dynamic cell growth condition induced changes in inflammation and oxidative stress level which closely resembled those in in vivo studies.

La microscopie à force atomique exploite les interactions entre une sonde et un échantillon. Les nanotubes de carbone représentent la sonde idéale, ils sont: fins, robustes, peu réactifs et ont un haut rapport d'aspect. L'utilisation à grande échelle des sondes à nanotubes de carbone passe par l'étude de leur comportement mécanique en contact avec une surface. Nous étudions deux types de sondes: les sondes avec nanotubes multiparois et les sondes avec nanotubes monoparois. Pour les nanotubes multiparois nous avons utilisé trois mode de fonctionnement AFM différents que sont les modes contact, modulation de fréquence et bruit thermique. Les résultats expérimentaux sont comparés à des modèles mécaniques que nous avons développés. Les études des nanotubes monoparois ont été réalisées à partir d'un AFM interférométrique. Ces mesures nous ont permis de déterminer l'énergie d'adhésion par unité de longueur d'un nanotube monoparoi sur des surfaces de graphite et mica.Enfin nous présentons deux applications des sondes AFM avec nanotube multiparoi. La première est un projet de sondes électrochimiques pour lesquelles un nanotube multiparoi sert de nanolocalisateur. La seconde est une étude par AFM d'une interface air-liquide de fluides complexes. / Atomic force microscopy exploits interactions between a probe and a sample. Carbon nanotubes represent the ideal probe; they are thin with a high aspect ratio, robustes and few reactive. The widespread use of carbon nanotube probes needs the study of their mechanical behavior in contact with a surface. We study two types of probes: probes with multiwalled nanotubes and probes with singlewalled nanotubes. For multiwalled nanotubes, we used three differents AFM modes that are contact, frequency modulation and thermalnoise. The experimental results are compared with mechanical models that we developed. Studies of singlewalled nanotubes have been produced from an interferometric AFM. These measures have enabled us to determine the adhesion energy per unit length of singlewalled nanotubes on graphite and mica surfaces.Finally we present two applications of AFM probes with multiwall nanotubes. The first is a project of electrochemical sensors for which a multiwall nanotube is used as a nanolocalisator. The second is a study by AFM of air-liquid interface of complex fluids.