I am specifically interested in breast cancer cells but numbers for any cancer type would be very helpul. Also what is their typical diameter?
Hello Maciej Jacek Swat
The cell membrane may have thousands of pores. It would be of interest to understand the nature of pores present in normal v/s cancer cells (in general). In cancer cells, the deficiency of lipoproteins in plasma membrane and lack of fatty acids in phospholipid make membrane more diluted, deformed and alleviated. This is why membrane of cancer cells is much softer, irregular, loose as compared to normal ones. So once deformed, the pore in the cancer cell membrane closes much more slowly than the pore in the normal cell membrane because the cancer cell membrane takes longer to relax to equilibrium than normal cell membrane. The pore area in the cancer cell membrane is larger than that in the normal cell membrane because the cancer cell membrane is softer than the normal cell membrane.
As the membrane of cancer cell become more soft and loose, the cell loses its minerals like calcium, potassium, magnesium etc., and water becomes an excessive constituent. The cancer cells demonstrate low capacitance and higher membrane conductance as compared to normal cells. Also, the cancer cell membrane is more susceptible to bending, stretching and perforating than the normal cell membrane because bending modulus of the cancer cell membrane is smaller than that of the normal cell membrane. Therefore, therapeutic agent delivery into cancer cells is easier than in normal cells.
You would want to refer to the papers attached below for more information.
https://hal.science/hal-03878999v1/file/manuscript.pdf
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2019/ra/c9ra07428g
Regarding the size of the pore, you may want to refer to the article attached below.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24940727
Best.
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