(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-03 15:22

"Our work shows that mechanical analysis can distinguish cancerous cells from normal ones even when they show similar shapes," Gimzewski and his colleagues concluded.

When a normal cell becomes cancerous, its shape and its internal "skeleton" change. This transformation causes a loss of stiffness, but is not always visible.

The softness, they noted, makes it easier for malignant cells to invade and spread - or metastasise - to other parts of the body.

Further tests are needed to see whether the simultaneous existence of other diseases besides cancer in a patient might affect the mechanical properties of the cells and thus throw off the nano-scale measurements.

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