Raman spectroscopic characterization of protein changes induced by 5-fluorouracil in colon cancer cells

This paper aims to evaluate the current state of knowledge on understanding the impact of cytostatic on colon cancer progression. We have compared the Raman profile of the normal colon fibroblast cell line (CCD-18Co) and two colon epithelial cancer cell lines (Caco-2 and LoVo). Our results indicate that ratios 1656/1305, 1256/1305, and 1656/1256 are the most relative Raman biomarkers for discrimination between normal fibroblast and cancer epithelial colon cells. The study results demonstrate that metabolic pathway reprogramming induced by 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) during colon cancer progression is detectable within both the whole cell and individual cell substructures, such as nucleus. These findings suggest that 5-FU-associated metabolic changes directly impact nuclear functions, which are critical for mechanisms of resistance and disease advancement. In the presented studies, the analysis of the secondary structure of proteins has also been performed. The obtained results demonstrate that CCD18-Co-CTRL and Lovo+5-FU (100 μM) cells are dominated by α-helix protein structure. Moreover, the obtained results indicate that supplementation with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) may reduce the structural features associated with β-sheet-rich proteins.