A technique to measure how effective chemotherapy is by studying the physical changes that occur in human cells has been developed by US scientists. The method combines atomic force microscopy and Raman spectroscopy to detect biomechanical and biochemical changes in the cells.
The effectiveness of chemotherapy is usually determined by measuring levels of cytokines (cell-signalling proteins) and chemokines (proteins secreted by cells), as well as cell viability, but these traditional methods cannot provide data on single cells, nor do they have the ability to image cells in vitro.
Atomic force microscopy images of (a) cancerous human lung cells and (b) benign human lung cells
To read the full article please visit Chemistry World.
Non-invasive detection of biomechanical and biochemical responses of human lung cells to short time chemotherapy exposure using AFM and Confocal Raman Spectroscopy
Lifu Xiao , Mingjie Tang , Qifei Li and Anhong Zhou
Anal. Methods, 2012, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C2AY25951F
