In Vitro Anticancer Drug Sensitivity Sensing through Single-Cell Raman Spectroscopy

Traditional in vitro anticancer drug sensitivity testing at the population level suffers from lengthy procedures and high false positive rates. To overcome these defects, we built a confocal Raman microscopy sensing system and proposed a single-cell approach via Raman-deuterium isotope probing (Raman-DIP) as a rapid and reliable in vitro drug efficacy evaluation method. Raman-DIP detected the incorporation of deuterium into the cell, which correlated with the metabolic activity of the cell. The human non-small cell lung cancer cell line HCC827 and human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 were tested against eight different anticancer drugs. The metabolic activity of cancer cells could be detected as early as 12 h, independent of cell growth. Incubation of cells in 30% heavy water (D₂O) did not show any negative effect on cell viability. Compared with traditional methods, Raman-DIP could accurately determine the drug effect, meanwhile, it could reduce the testing period from 72-144 h to 48 h. Moreover, the heterogeneity of cells responding to anticancer drugs was observed at the single-cell level. This proof-of-concept study demonstrated the potential of Raman-DIP to be a reliable tool for cancer drug discovery and drug susceptibility testing.