In recent years, experimental evidences have suggested important direct implications of viscoelasticity of human cells and cell cytoskeleton dynamics on some relevant collective and single-cell behaviors such as migration, adhesion, and morphogenesis. Consequently, the mechanical properties of single cells and how cells respond to mechanical stimuli have been at the center of a vivid debate in the scientific community. By referencing important experimental findings from the literature that have shown that human metastatic tumor cells are approximately 70% softer than benign cells, independently from the cell lines examined, the present authors have very recently theoretically demonstrated that these differences in stiffness might be exploited to mechanically discriminate healthy and cancer cells, for example, through low-intensity therapeutic ultrasound. In particular, by using a generalized viscoelastic paradigm combining classical and fractional derivative–based models, it has been found that se...