Detection of cancerous cervical cells using physical adhesion of fluorescent silica particles and centripetal force

摘要

Here we describe a non-traditional method to identify cancerous human cervical epithelial cells inna culture dish based on physical adhesion between silica beads and cells. It is a simple opticalnfluorescence-based technique which detects the relative difference in the amount of fluorescent silicanbeads physically adherent to surfaces of cancerous and normal cervical cells. The method utilizes thencentripetal force gradient that occurs in a rotating culture dish. Due to the variation in the balancenbetween adhesion and centripetal forces, cancerous and normal cells demonstrate clearly distinctivendistributions of the fluorescent particles adherent to the cell surface over the culture dish. The methodndemonstrates higher adhesion of silica particles to normal cells compared to cancerous cells. Thendifference in adhesion was initially observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The AFM data werenused to design the parameters of the rotational dish experiment. The optical method that we describe isnmuch faster and technically simpler than AFM. This work provides proof of the concept that physicalninteractions can be used to accurately discriminate normal and cancer cells.