A MACHINE that measures the springiness of cancer cells is being developed to
show how likely a tumour is to spread. Called the Optical Cell Stretcher, the
laser-based machine could one day save patients from radical chemotherapy or
radiotherapy treatments they don’t need. Doctors can sometimes overestimate the
aggressiveness of particular cancers.
At the moment, technicians look at the shapes of the cancer cells from a
tumour biopsy. The more irregular the cells are, the more likely the cancer is
to have spread around the body. But doctors often disagree about the prognosis,
so they tend to err on the…
