Nanoscale structural alterations in cancer cells to assess anti-cancerous drug effectiveness in cancer treatment using TEM imaging

Abstract

Understanding the nanoscale structural changes can provide the physical state of cells/tissues. It has been now shown that increases in nanoscale structural alterations are associated with the progress of carcinogenesis in most of the cancer cases, including early carcinogenesis. Anti-cancerous therapies are intended for the growth inhibition of cancer cells; however, it is challenging to detect the efficacy of such drugs in early stages of treatment. A unique method to assess the impact of anti-cancerous drugs on cancerous cells/tissues is to probe the nanoscale structural alterations. In this paper, we study the effect of different anti-cancerous drugs on ovarian tumorigenic cells, using their nanoscale structural alterations as a biomarker. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging on thin cell sections is performed to obtain their nanoscale structures. The degree of nanoscale structural alterations of tumorigenic cells and anti-cancerous drug treated tumorigenic cells are quantified by using the recently developed inverse participation ratio (IPR) technique. Results show an increase in the degree of nanoscale fluctuations in tumorigenic cells relative to non-tumorigenic cells; then a nearly reverse of the degree of fluctuation of tumorigenic cells to that of non-tumorigenic cells, after the anti-cancerous drugs treatment. These results support that the effect of anti-cancerous drugs in cancer treatment can be quantified by using the degree of nanoscale fluctuations of the cells via TEM imaging. Potential applications of the technique for cancer treatment are also discussed.