Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA.
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
Medicina (Kaunas). 2022 May 12;58(5):654. doi: 10.3390/medicina58050654.
The severity of the cancer statistics around the globe and the complexity involving the behavior of cancer cells inevitably calls for contributions from multidisciplinary areas of research. As such, materials science became a powerful asset to support biological research in comprehending the macro and microscopic behavior of cancer cells and untangling factors that may contribute to their progression or remission. The contributions of cellular water dynamics in this process have always been debated and, in recent years, experimental works performed with Quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) brought new perspectives to these discussions. In this review, we address these works and highlight the value of QENS in comprehending the role played by water molecules in tumor cells and their response to external agents, particularly chemotherapy drugs. In addition, this paper provides an overview of QENS intended for scientists with different backgrounds and comments on the possibilities to be explored with the next-generation spectrometers under construction.
全球癌症统计数据的严峻性以及涉及癌细胞行为的复杂性不可避免地需要来自多学科研究领域的贡献。因此，材料科学成为支持生物学研究的有力手段，以理解癌细胞的宏观和微观行为，并梳理可能促进其进展或缓解的因素。在这个过程中，细胞内水动力学的贡献一直存在争议，近年来，使用准弹性中子散射（QENS）进行的实验工作为这些讨论带来了新的视角。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了这些工作，并强调了 QENS 在理解水分子在肿瘤细胞中的作用及其对外部试剂（特别是化疗药物）的反应方面的价值。此外，本文还为具有不同背景的科学家提供了 QENS 的概述，并对在建的下一代光谱仪可探索的可能性进行了评论。
