Cancer cells softer than healthy cells: study

Cancer cells softer than healthy cells: study
A doctor at the Salick Health Care, Inc. Cancer Care Center, Miami looks at cancer cells in this undated file photo. Cancer cells, like ripe fruit, are much softer than healthy cells, scientists said on Sunday in a finding that could help doctors diagnose tumors and figure out which might be the deadliest. (Files/Reuters)WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cancer cells, like ripe fruit, aremuch softer than healthy cells, scientists said on Sunday in afinding that could help doctors diagnose tumors and figure outwhich might be the deadliest.
The researchers used a nanotechnology device called anAtomic Force Microscope that allowed them to give a little poketo healthy cells and cancerous cells that had spread from theoriginal site of tumors.
Cancer cells taken from people with pancreatic, breast andlung tumors were more than 70 percent softer than benign cells,the scientists wrote in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
"The bottom line is now we can feel the cancer cells withthis technology, in addition to looking at them and analyzingthem in a molecular way," Jianyu Rao of the Jonsson CancerCenter at the University of California at Los Angeles, one ofthe researchers, said in a telephone interview.
"We think it may be diagnostically helpful."
The different types of cancer cells examined in the studyexhibited similar levels of softness, allowing the healthy anddiseased ones to be clearly identified.
The technique may represent a new method for detectingcancer, particularly in cells from body cavity fluids for whichdiagnosis with current techniques can be difficult, theresearchers said.
Conventional diagnostic methods miss about 30 percent ofcases in which cancer cells are present in this fluid, theresearchers said.
The microscope used in the study has a small tip on aspring to push against a cell's surface and determine its levelof softness or firmness.
ROTTEN TOMATOES
"You look at two tomatoes in the supermarket and both arered. One is rotten, but it looks normal," UCLA chemistryprofessor James Gimzewski, another of the researchers, said ina statement.
"If you pick up the tomatoes and feel them, it's easy tofigure out which one is rotten. We're doing the same thing.We're poking and quantitatively measuring the softness of thecells."
When cancer is spreading from its original site, forexample the pancreas, into other parts of the body in a processcalled metastasis, tumor cells can cause fluid to build up incavities such as the chest and abdomen.
If this fluid could be swiftly and accurately tested forthe presence of cancer cells, doctors could make betterdecisions about how aggressively a patient should be treated orif any treatment is appropriate at all, the researchers said.
Rao said he hoped measuring the softness of cells might inthe future help determine which tumors are more likely to bedeadly. Rao said that, particularly in diseases like prostatecancer, it can be difficult to distinguish a tumor that mightkill a patient from one that might pose little threat.
"More broadly, what we really had in mind is basicallyhoping some day that when we look at the primary tumors that wecan predict which one is more aggressive," Rao said.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and John O'Callaghan)