Tokyo: Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University in Japan on Saturday said they have found that the motion of unlabelled cells can be used to tell whether they are cancerous or healthy. They observed malignant fibrosarcoma cells and healthy fibroblasts on a dish and found that tracking and analysis of their paths can be used to differentiate them with up to 94 per cent accuracy. Beyond diagnosis, their technique may also shed light on cell motility related functions, like tissue healing, according to the study published in the journal PLOS One.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Hiromi Miyoshi, came up with a way of tracking cells using phase-contrast microscopy, one of the most common ways of observing cells. Phase-contrast microscopy is entirely label free, allowing cells to move about on a petri dish closer to their native state, and is not affected by the optical properties of the plastic petri dishes through which cells are imaged.

Through innovative image analysis, they were able to extract trajectories of many individual cells. They focused on properties of the paths taken, like migration speed, and how curvy the paths were, all of which would encode subtle differences in deformation and movement. As a test, they compared healthy fibroblast cells, the key component of animal tissue, and malignant fibrosarcoma cells, cancerous cells which derive from fibrous connective tissue.

They were able to show that the cells migrated in subtly different ways, as characterised by the “sum of turn angles” (how curvy the paths were), the frequency of shallow turns, and how quickly they moved. In fact, by combining both the sum of turn angles and how often they made shallow turns, they could predict whether a cell was cancerous or not with an accuracy of 94 per cent.

The team’s work not only promises a new way to discriminate cancer cells, but applications to research of any biological function based on cell motility, like the healing of wounds and tissue growth, said the study. 

(IANS)