School of Physics and Clinical and Optometric Sciences, Technological University Dublin, City Campus, 8 Dublin, Ireland.
FOCAS Research Institute, Technological University Dublin, City Campus, 8 Dublin, Ireland.
Molecules. 2020 Nov 26;25(23):5554. doi: 10.3390/molecules25235554.
Stem cell technology has attracted considerable attention over recent decades due to its enormous potential in regenerative medicine and disease therapeutics. Studying the underlying mechanisms of stem cell differentiation and tissue generation is critical, and robust methodologies and different technologies are required. Towards establishing improved understanding and optimised triggering and control of differentiation processes, analytical techniques such as flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, RNA in situ hybridisation analysis, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting have contributed much. However, progress in the field remains limited because such techniques provide only limited information, as they are only able to address specific, selected aspects of the process, and/or cannot visualise the process at the subcellular level. Additionally, many current analytical techniques involve the disruption of the investigation process (tissue sectioning, immunostaining) and cannot monitor the cellular differentiation process in situ, in real-time. Vibrational spectroscopy, as a label-free, non-invasive and non-destructive analytical technique, appears to be a promising candidate to potentially overcome many of these limitations as it can provide detailed biochemical fingerprint information for analysis of cells, tissues, and body fluids. The technique has been widely used in disease diagnosis and increasingly in stem cell technology. In this work, the efforts regarding the use of vibrational spectroscopy to identify mechanisms of stem cell differentiation at a single cell and tissue level are summarised. Both infrared absorption and Raman spectroscopic investigations are explored, and the relative merits, and future perspectives of the techniques are discussed.
干细胞技术在近几十年来引起了相当大的关注，因为它在再生医学和疾病治疗中有巨大的潜力。研究干细胞分化和组织生成的潜在机制至关重要，需要强大的方法和不同的技术。为了更好地理解和优化分化过程的触发和控制，分析技术如流式细胞术、免疫组织化学、逆转录聚合酶链反应、RNA 原位杂交分析和荧光激活细胞分选等做出了很大的贡献。然而，该领域的进展仍然受到限制，因为这些技术提供的信息有限，因为它们只能解决过程的特定、选定方面，和/或不能在亚细胞水平上可视化过程。此外，许多当前的分析技术涉及到破坏研究过程（组织切片、免疫染色），并且不能实时监测细胞分化过程。振动光谱学作为一种无标记、非侵入性和非破坏性的分析技术，似乎是一个很有前途的候选者，有可能克服许多这些限制，因为它可以提供详细的生化指纹信息，用于分析细胞、组织和体液。该技术已广泛应用于疾病诊断，并越来越多地应用于干细胞技术。在这项工作中，总结了使用振动光谱学在单细胞和组织水平上识别干细胞分化机制的努力。探讨了红外吸收和拉曼光谱学的研究，并讨论了技术的相对优点和未来前景。
