POWERFUL NEW MICROSCOPE

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24150, 8 January 1944, Page 2

POWERFUL NEW MICROSCOPE

Invention of Swedish

Scientists

USE IN CANCER RESEARCH

From Our Own Correspondent STOCKHOLM, November 23

Swedish research workers have recently been provided with an ingenious instrument which makes it possible to study the infinitesimally small ultra-structures in cancer cells and muscle fibres.

It is in use at the Physical Institute in Stockholm, and consists of a giant “electron microscope," constructed by the head of the institute (Professor Manne Siegbahn), who some years ago was awarded the Nobel Prize for important contributions in the sphere of Rontgenology. In a recent interview the scientist in charge of the present investigations, Dr. F. Siostrand, gave some glimpses of the work that is being done with the giant microscope, “In these investigations,” he said, “we have to get our preparations as thin as possible, and, thanks to a new Swedish cutting method, we can now obtain preparations as incredibly thin as only a few hundred-thousandths of a millimetre in thickness. With the electron microscope, however, it is possible to photograph fibre structures with a cross section as small as five or ten millionths of a millimetre.

"The magnification necessary for this result is obtained by letting an electron ray instead of ordinary light penetrate the preparation on the objectholder, the ray being deflected in ingeniously constructed electromagnetic lenses in the same way as light in an ordinary microscope. The effective magnification becomes nearly a hundred times as great as could be obtained with a light microscope.” With the electron microscope the Swedish scientist says it is possible to study the very finest cellular structures which, next to the structure of the molecules themselves, are in all probability of decisive importance for the life processes in the cell. The discoveries by chemists of various substances in the cells, and the transformation of these substances during the life of the cells, must be co-ordinated with a study of the fine structure of the cells. Certain chemical transformations are thus confined to certain structures, which is no fortuitous circumstance, but probably means that the structure is in many cases an essential condition for the transformation.

It is in order to get an insight into this fine structure that efforts are now being made to gain a knowledge of hitherto mysterious life processes. As far as the cancer cell in particular is concerned it is not inconceivable that with this new aid tp research, scientists will be able to bring ( o light some disturbance in the structure which might prove to be the origin of the process of the disease.