Zhang Renshu, Zhou Yanfei, Wang Paul C, Sridhar Rajagopalan
Department of Radiation Oncology, Howard University, Washington, DC.
J Basic Clin Med. 2012 Jan 1;1(1):16-19.
Hyperthermia is used in combination with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy in the treatment of various types of cancer. Currently, the tumor cell response to hyperthermia is determined largely based on the size reduction of tumor mass, which is insensitive.
We tested the feasibility of bioluminescent imaging (BLI) in evaluation of the tumor cell response to hyperthermia by exposing luciferase-expressing MDA-MB-231-luc human breast cancer cells to high temperature (43 °C) for 10 minutes to 2 hours. The tumor cells were the imaged and the light signal generated by the tumor cells was quantified with BLI. To validate its usefulness, the light signal intensity was comparatively analyzed with the tumor cell clonogenicity and cell viability, which were measured with classic clonogenic and MTT assays.
The light signal intensity determined by BLI was closely correlated with the absolute number of viable cells as well as the cell viability measured with the traditional MTT assay under normal culture condition. Relative to the clonogenicity of tumor cells after exposure to hyperthermia, however, BLI underestimated, while MTT assay overestimated the cell viability. Difference in the interpretation of tumor cell clonogenic ability following hyperthermia with BLI, MTT dye, and clonogenic assay may be due to the different mechanisms of the three measurements as well as the fact that hyperthermia can induce cell damage at levels of both transient and permanent.
BLI is sensitive, convenient, and potentially valuable in the evaluation and monitoring of tumor cell response to treatments including hyperthermia.
热疗与放疗和/或化疗联合用于治疗各种类型的癌症。目前，肿瘤细胞对热疗的反应很大程度上是根据肿瘤体积的缩小来确定的，这种方法并不敏感。
我们通过将表达荧光素酶的MDA-MB-231-luc人乳腺癌细胞暴露于高温（43°C）10分钟至2小时，测试了生物发光成像（BLI）在评估肿瘤细胞对热疗反应中的可行性。对肿瘤细胞进行成像，并使用BLI对肿瘤细胞产生的光信号进行定量。为了验证其有效性，将光信号强度与通过经典克隆形成和MTT试验测量的肿瘤细胞克隆形成能力和细胞活力进行比较分析。
在正常培养条件下，BLI测定的光信号强度与活细胞的绝对数量以及传统MTT试验测量的细胞活力密切相关然而，相对于热疗后肿瘤细胞的克隆形成能力，BLI低估了，而MTT试验高估了细胞活力。用BLI、MTT染料和克隆形成试验对热疗后肿瘤细胞克隆形成能力的解释存在差异，可能是由于这三种测量方法的机制不同，以及热疗可在瞬时和永久水平上诱导细胞损伤这一事实。
BLI在评估和监测包括热疗在内的肿瘤细胞对治疗的反应方面敏感、方便且具有潜在价值。
