This article was taken from the June 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Nanobiologists hoping to understand how cancer cells spread have developed a microscope to examine them at the nanoscale. "We asked a simple question: what mechanical properties of cancer cells enable metastasis [the spread of cancer] in living tissue?" says Roderick Lim, a professor at the University of Basel, who led the research. Compared to relatively healthy cells, cancer cells move, spread and invade other tissue - so understanding how they do so could improve diagnosis. "Perhaps these unique mechanical properties provide cancer cells with the ability to squeeze through the surrounding tumour tissue, out into the blood-stream and back in," says Lim, 38.
Lim and researchers Marko Loparic and Marija Plodinec developed Automated and Reliable Tissue Diagnostics (ARTIDIS), an atomic-force microscope-based instrument, to detect and differentiate individual cancer cells. Consisting of an ultra-sharp tip -- on the order of 5-10 nanometres --balanced by a cantilever, ARTIDIS makes tens of thousands of tiny indentations across a biopsy surface, measuring its mechanical properties, primarily stiffness within the tumour.
Lim discovered that whereas healthy tissue has uniform stiffness, cancer cells tend to be soft, with stiff surrounding tissue -- a finding that could explain how cancer cells can spread. By determining the mechanical signature of tumour tissue, the team hope to accelerate and improve diagnosis and therapy.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
