China-US team boosts cancer knowledge
Print Edition
CHINESE and American scientists have developed a technique that uses tiny elastic balls filled with fluorescent nanoparticles to better understand the mechanical forces between cells, a move that may predict cancer.
In a study published on Monday in the journal of Nature Communication, researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the quantification of 3D forces within cells living in Petri dishes as well as live specimens.
This research may unlock some of the mysteries related to embryonic development and cancer stem cells, such as tumor-repopulating cells.
According to the researchers, scientists previously struggled to quantify the forces called tractions that push, pull and squeeze cells throughout their lifecycles because the tools available to measure force were not small enough to fit into intercellular spaces or sensitive enough to detect the minuscule movements within cell colonies.
Although small on a human scale, the traction plays a fundamental role in cell physiology.
“If we place a single cell in a medium within a Petri dish, it will not survive for long, even if we provide all of the nutrients needed,” said Wang Ning, a mechanical science and engineering professor at Huazhong.
“The cells fail to form any sort of tissue because there is no support or scaffolding on which to build,” Wang said.
As cells grow and reproduce, they exert forces on each other while competing for space. Team members found that if they inject their tiny elastic spheres into early stage embryos of zebrafish and colonies of melanoma cells of mice in Petri dishes, the spheres experience the forces.
“The cells do not seem to mind the intrusion,” Wang said. “The spheres are made of a nontoxic microgel, and even though the cells will push them around, they do not seem to interfere with development.”
To measure the amount of force imposed on the cells, the team placed fluorescent nanoparticles inside of the spheres.
When the cells squeeze the spheres, the nanoparticles all move the same amount per area of force. The researchers can then measure the motions of the glowing particles using fluorescent light microscopy to calculate the amount of force exerted on the spheres and cells.
Using this technique, the team has marked the first successful measurement of all three types of force, compression, tension and shear, in all three dimensions, Wang said.
This ability to quantify force in cells could prove crucial to cancer cell research, Wang said.
Primary tumors are usually not deadly, Wang added. The real killer appears to be the spread of tumor-repopulating cells from primary tumors into soft tissues with low intercellular tractions.
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