Study of gemcitabine-sensitive/resistant cancer cells by cell cloning and synchrotron FTIR microspectroscopy

Over the last few years, significant scientific insight on the effects of chemotherapy drugs at cellular level using synchrotron-based FTIR (S-FTIR) microspectroscopy has been obtained. The work carried out so far has identified spectral differences in cancer cells before and after the addition of drugs. However, this had to account for the following issues. First, chemotherapy agents cause both chemical and morphological changes in cells, the latter being responsible for changes in the spectral profile not correlated with biochemical characteristics. Second, as the work has been carried out in mixed populations of cells (resistant and sensitive), it is important to distinguish the spectral differences which are due to sensitivity/resistance to those due to cell morphology and/or cell mixture. Here, we successfully cloned resistant and sensitive lung cancer cells to a chemotherapy drug. This allowed us to study a more uniform population and, more important, allowed us to study sensitive and resistant cells prior to the addition of the drug with S-FTIR microscopy. Principal component analysis (PCA) did not detect major differences in resistant cells prior to and after adding the drug. However, PCA separated sensitive cells prior to and after the addition of the drug. This would indicate that the spectral differences between cells prior to and after adding a drug might reside on those more or less sensitive cells that have been able to remain alive when they were collected to be studied with S-FTIR microspectroscopy. This is a proof of concept and a feasibility study showing a methodology that opens a new way to identify the effects of drugs on more homogeneous cell populations using vibrational spectroscopy.