Raman spectroscopy of tumour cells exposed to clinically relevant doses of ionizing radiation

Improvements to radiation therapy treatment outcomes rely, in part, on consideration of patient specific radiosensitivity. Therefore an assay which quantifies radiation-induced biochemical changes, and subsequently characterizes radiation responses in tumour and normal tissue is required. This wor...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Harder, Samantha
Other Authors: Jirasek, Andrew
Language:English
en
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1828/4714
Description
Summary:Improvements to radiation therapy treatment outcomes rely, in part, on consideration of patient specific radiosensitivity. Therefore an assay which quantifies radiation-induced biochemical changes, and subsequently characterizes radiation responses in tumour and normal tissue is required. This work investigates the use of a single cell Raman spectroscopic technique to identify radiation-induced responses in human lung (H460), breast (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231) and prostate (LNCaP) cancer cell lines each selected to create a panel of cells varying in tissue of origin and radiation sensitivity. Cells were cultured in vitro and exposed to clinically relevant (< 10 Gy) doses of radiation. Cell populations receiving 30 and 50 Gy were also studied in order to further elucidate dose-dependent trends and give additional information about the ability of Raman spectroscopy to identify radiation-induced biochemical changes occurring in the cell populations. It was found that using Raman spectroscopy to identify a radiation-induced response in human cells cultured in vitro is governed by the subtlety of the radiation-induced response inherent to a specific cell line. Also the type of biochemical changes occurring in response to exposure to radiation will be dependent on the specific cell line. This work suggests that effective use of single cell Raman spectroscopy to monitor a patient's response to radiation early on in treatment (where the disease has been exposed to 10 Gy or less) is possible. However, a detailed knowledge of the biochemical changes associated with the unique radiation response for that particular disease is required. === Graduate === 0541 === 0752 === 0992 === hardersj@uvic.ca