The softening of human bladder cancer cells happens at an early stage of the malignancy process

• Jorge R. Ramos,
• Joanna Pabijan,
• Ricardo Garcia and
• Malgorzata Lekka

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 447–457, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.52

• Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Radzikowskiego 152, 31-342 Kraków, Poland 10.3762/bjnano.5.52 Abstract Various studies have demonstrated that alterations in the deformability of cancerous cells are strongly linked to the actin cytoskeleton. By using atomic force

• -malignant cells. This underlines the diagnostic character of stiffness that can be used as a biomarker of bladder cancer. Similar stiffness levels, observed for cancerous cells, cannot be fully explained by the organization of the actin cytoskeleton since it is different in all malignant cells. Our results

• filaments; atomic force microscopy (AFM); bladder cells; cytoskeleton; elastic properties of cells; malignancy degree of cancer cells; Introduction During oncogenic progression, many cancer-related alterations change both the internal structures of cells and also their surroundings, i.e., the extracellular

Apertureless scanning near-field optical microscopy of sparsely labeled tobacco mosaic viruses and the intermediate filament desmin

• Alexander Harder,
• Mareike Dieding,
• Volker Walhorn,
• Sven Degenhard,
• Andreas Brodehl,
• Christina Wege,
• Hendrik Milting and
• Dario Anselmetti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 510–516, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.60

• desmin intermediate filament protein assembles to extensive fibrous networks, which are an integral part of the cytoskeleton of heart muscle cells. Several mutations of the desmin gene are associated with severe muscle diseases like arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) [18][19][20][21