July 7th AM

Today, we look at the scans of different cells. The goal is to measure the elasticity of each cell and compare the softness of different cell lines. The sequence of precancerous cell lines from early to late stage goes from EPC to CPA to CPB to CPC to CPD. The cantilever tip is used to indent the cell at the nucleus and the elasticity or Young's modulus of the cell is measured. They expect the later stage cells to be very soft and elastic and to be able to squeeze between endothelial cells in capillaries and metastasize to other organs. A gentle slope on the graph indicates that the cell is soft or elastic. The cells auto-fluoresce so they do not have to dye the cells to visualize the nucleus. Next, they will look at the elasticity of the cells after incubating them in tamoxifen, an anti-cancer drug. They expect the cell lines that are killed by the drug should show less elasticity compared to cell lines that are not affected by the drug. Cells that are dyed with a fluorescence dte usually are stiffer than cells that are not dyed at all.