Exploring New Strategies to Monitor Autophagy and Related Cell Death Pathways Using Raman Spectroscopy

Abstract

These Raman studies demonstrate the uniqueness of Raman spectroscopy to be able to obtain vast biochemical information (particularly lipid, protein and DNA relative intensity changes) from live and dead cancer cells non-invasively (as illustrated in Figure 1), without the use of fluorescent reporter constructs, labels, stains or contrasting-enhancing techniques. Differen - tiation of autophagy, apoptosis and necrotic cell death is im - portant in biomedical sciences, especially in cancer treatment. Autophagy may suppress the initiation of cancer growth, pro - mote cancer cell survival, or play a role in cell death. Therefore improved detection, discrimination and understanding of au - tophagy and related cell death processes will enable improved and optimized treatment plans for cancer therapy through as - sessing cellular response to chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other cancer-targeted treatments and differentiating between autophagy, apoptosis and necrosis occurring in cells