Optical study of chemotherapy efficiency in cancer treatment via intracellular structural disorder analysis using partial wave spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study uses optical partial wave spectroscopy to quantify nanoscale structural disorder in prostate cancer cells, revealing correlations between disorder strength, tumor aggressiveness, and chemotherapy resistance, suggesting potential for assessing treatment effectiveness.

Contribution

The paper introduces the application of PWS to analyze nanoscale structural disorder in prostate cancer cells and links disorder strength to tumor severity and chemo-resistance.

Findings

Higher disorder strength correlates with increased tumorigenicity.

Chemo-resistant cells show higher disorder strength than sensitive ones.

Potential for using disorder strength as a biomarker for chemotherapy effectiveness.

Abstract

With the progress of cancer, the macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, lipids, etc. inside cells undergo spatial structural rearrangements and alterations. Mesoscopic physics based optical partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) was recently introduced to quantify changes in the nanoscale structural disorder in biological cells. The measurement is done in a parameter termed as disorder strength ( Ld) which represents the degree of nanoscale structural disorder inside the cells. It was shown that cancerous cells have higher disorder strength than the normal cells. In this work, using the PWS technique, we analyzed the hierarchy of different types of prostate cancer cells by quantifying their average disorder strengths. The results showed that increase in the tumorigenicity level of prostate cancer is correlated with the increase in the disorder strength Ld. Furthermore, using the Ld parameter we also analyzed docetaxel chemo-resistance attribute of these prostate cancer cells, in comparison to docetaxel chemo-sensitive cancer cells. Our results show that chemo drug resistive cancer cells have mutations to more aggressive, or increased in Ld values relative to the chemo sensitive cancer cells. Potential applications of the Ld parameter for determining the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug on cancer cells are discussed.