One of the biggest challenges in the development of anti-cancer drugs is a variety of cancer types. Cancers originate from a variety of cells and tissues. Each cancer has its own characteristics, symptoms and sensitivity to anti-cancer drugs. For example, effective treatment of colon cancer has little effect on lung cancer.
Therefore, in order to create effective cancer treatments, scientists are dedicated to finding the causes of cell mutations. In a new paper published in Nature Communications, researchers at the California Institute of Technology showed that a framework developed using special microscopic techniques can study the metabolic processes of cancer cells.
This work was done by researchers from Wei Lu's laboratory, assistant professor of chemistry, and researchers from the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle and UCLA. This is a combination of a technique called Raman spectroscopy and its improved guided Raman scattering (SRS) microscope. Raman spectroscopy utilizes natural vibrations generated by bonds between atoms constituting molecules. In this method, the molecules are first irradiated with laser light. When the photon of the laser hits the molecule, the energy will increase or decrease due to the interaction with the vibration of the molecular bond. Each bond in a molecule affects the photon in a unique and predictable way, so the structure of the molecule can be inferred from the "appearance" of the photon that bounces back from it. SRS microscopes can provide images of these molecular structures by mapping the distribution of chemical bonds in the target. Wei and her colleagues used these combined techniques to examine the metabolites in five commonly used melanoma cell lines in the study. Melanoma cells were chosen because of their extensive metabolic properties and can be studied. Through research
Metabolites of cells, researchers can begin to speculate on how their metabolism works and how they are targeted by drugs. This is similar to how vandals gather information about machines in a factory and plan where they are most likely to cause damage.
The question we are interested in is why all the cancer cells we observe behave completely differently. ""Because certain cells rely on certain metabolic pathways, these "
The research team discovered several new metabolic sensitivities in cancer cells, including monounsaturated fatty acid synthesis, but the main purpose of the current research is to do basic scientific research
James Heath of the Seattle Institute of Systems Biology said that this new technology will allow researchers to understand the inside of cancer cells better than ever. "Chemical imaging methods developed in the laboratory can identify drug metabolism sensitivity in highly aggressive cancer models. Other analytical methods can easily ignore these metabolic defects."