Optical microscopy together with correct picture processing software program can characterize metabolism per cell. Credit score: Biophotonics Discovery (2025). DOI: 10.1117/1.BIOS.2.1.012702
Understanding how tumors change their metabolism to withstand remedies is a rising focus in most cancers analysis. As most cancers cells adapt to therapies, their metabolism typically shifts, which may also help them survive and thrive regardless of medical interventions. This course of, generally known as metabolic reprogramming, is a key issue within the improvement of remedy resistance.
Nevertheless, present strategies to review these modifications could be expensive, complicated, and sometimes damaging to the cells being studied. Researchers on the College of Kentucky have developed a brand new, easier strategy to look at these metabolic shifts in most cancers cells, providing a extra accessible and efficient software for most cancers analysis.
As reported in Biophotonics Discovery, the crew developed a novel microscopy approach that makes use of a typical fluorescence microscope together with imaging software program. This methodology permits scientists to look at and analyze metabolic modifications in particular person most cancers cells, with out the necessity for costly tools or damaging testing.
Of their experiments, the researchers centered on head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), a kind of most cancers that’s typically proof against radiation remedy. They discovered that radiation remedy induced important metabolic modifications within the cells, notably by the activation of a protein referred to as HIF-1α, which helps cells adapt to low oxygen ranges generally present in tumors.
The crew used commercially accessible metabolic probes to evaluate how totally different HNSCC cell strains reacted to radiation. They found that one cell line (rSCC-61) confirmed a lot increased ranges of HIF-1α expression in comparison with one other, suggesting a stronger metabolic shift in direction of radioresistance. By inhibiting HIF-1α, they had been capable of reverse a few of these modifications and make the radioresistant cells extra delicate to radiation.
This new approach may very well be a game-changer for researchers learning most cancers metabolism. Through the use of available, low-cost instruments, scientists can now carry out detailed single-cell analyses of metabolic modifications in response to remedies, opening up new alternatives for understanding and overcoming remedy resistance in most cancers.
Senior writer Caigang Zhu remarks, “The study demonstrates the functional flexibility of our novel optical approach to report the key metabolic changes of radioresistant and radiosensitive HNSCC under therapeutics stress, thereby revealing the role of metabolism reprogramming in the development of resistance to cancer therapeutics.”
Zhu notes that this strategy was impressed by the sensible challenges the crew confronted when attempting to entry costly metabolic instruments up to now, explaining, “This work was motivated by the practical barriers to access to expensive metabolic tools we met in the past for tumor metabolism studies. Our demonstrations and results are exciting, as we now have a cost-effective approach to studying cell metabolism at single-cell level with minimal expertise requirement.”
The outcomes of this examine are promising for the way forward for most cancers metabolism discoveries. A typical fluorescence microscope together with correct imaging processing methods may very well be a strong software for learning the position of metabolic reprogramming within the improvement of resistance to most cancers therapeutics on the single-cell stage in a extra environment friendly, cost-effective, and nondestructive method. With this innovation, the examine of tumor metabolism might change into extra accessible to a broader vary of researchers.
Extra info:
Jing Yan et al, Optical imaging gives flow-cytometry–like single-cell stage evaluation of HIF-1α-mediated metabolic modifications in radioresistant head and neck squamous carcinoma cells, Biophotonics Discovery (2025). DOI: 10.1117/1.BIOS.2.1.012702
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Microscopy strategy provides new solution to examine most cancers therapeutics at single-cell stage (2025, February 3)
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