A different view of cancer cells
Most cancer deaths are caused by metastatic tumors, which break free from the original cancer site and spread throughout the body. For that to happen, cancer cells must undergo many genetic and physical changes.Many of those genetic changes have been studied extensively, but it has been more difficult to study the physical changes. Now, MIT researchers have developed a way to study three key physical properties of cancer cells — their mass, stiffness and friction — on a large scale. Using this system, the researchers have analyzed how changes in those traits may allow cancer cells to migrate to new sites: Scientists have previously observed that cell lines with higher metastatic potential are generally more deformable, but the MIT team found that decreased friction also appears to help cancer cells traverse narrow channels, suggesting that friction may play a role in the ability of cancer cells to travel in blood...