• Petar Stupar, Ana Podolski-Renić, Maria Ines Villalba, Miodrag Dragoj, Sofija Jovanović Stojanov, Milica Pešić, and Sandor Kasas.
• Laboratory of Biological Electron Microscopy, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
• Medicina (Kaunas). 2021 May 4; 57 (5).

AbstractBackground and Objectives: Optimization of chemotherapy is crucial for cancer patients. Timely and costly efficient treatments are emerging due to the increasing incidence of cancer worldwide. Here, we present a methodology of nano-motion analysis that could be developed to serve as a screening tool able to determine the best chemotherapy option for a particular patient within hours. Materials and Methods: Three different human cancer cell lines and their multidrug resistant (MDR) counterparts were analyzed with an atomic force microscope (AFM) using tipless cantilevers to adhere the cells and monitor their nano-motions. Results: The cells exposed to doxorubicin (DOX) differentially responded due to their sensitivity to this chemotherapeutic. The death of sensitive cells corresponding to the drop in signal variance occurred in less than 2 h after DOX application, while MDR cells continued to move, even showing an increase in signal variance. Conclusions: Nano-motion sensing can be developed as a screening tool that will allow simple, inexpensive and quick testing of different chemotherapeutics for each cancer patient. Further investigations on patient-derived tumor cells should confirm the method's applicability.

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