Nanomechanical Analysis of Cells from Cancer Patients
S. E. Cross, Yusheng Jin, Jianyu Rao, James K. Gimzewski
Abstract
This chapter shows important implications for the combined use of imaging analysis with nanomechanical measurements as a novel biomarker for evaluating and sensing changes in tumour cells, and which is easily translated into clinical settings. Change in cell stiffness is a new characteristic of cancer cells that affects the way they spread. The need for biomarkers for cancer detection and analysis is critical due to the complexity of the disease. Cancer is extremely biochemically diverse, yet mechanically a common modulus for each cell type is exhibited even for different tumour types and patient effusions. Metastatic malignant effusions constitute an unequivocal sign of widespread cancer. Cancer cell detection relies on qualitative morphological analyses of shape change resulting from biochemical alterations, such as cytoskeletal remodeling. Analyses of body fluid samples, rather than primary tumour samples, were chosen, because tumour cells in body fluid are all metastatic in nature and thus provide a clonal population of metastatic cells for analysis.