Imaging reveals how a tumor-fighting drug triggers cellular breakdown

Optics trade publication SPIE highlighted research led by the University of Cincinnati's Jiajie Diao, PhD, published in Biophotonics Discovery that demonstrated how super-resolution microscopy can track how a drug alters several important structures within cancer cells.

The research focused on the drug sunitinib that's used to treat several cancers including kidney cancer. It has traditionally been thought the drug's effectiveness comes from inhibiting enzymes that drive tumor growth, but researchers have also recognized the exact location the drug travels to within cancer cells can influence effectiveness and side effects.

Sunitinib is naturally fluorescent, so Diao's lab could easily track the drug's path in living cells using structured illumination microscopy, an imaging technique that reveals structures too small to be seen with conventional light microscopes.

Using this technique, the researchers confirmed higher concentrations of sunitinib caused progressively greater cell death. Additionally, the imaging method revealed the drug concentrates primarily inside lysosomes, parts of cells which recycle cellular materials.

Read the SPIE article.

The research was also featured in MSN. Read the MSN article.

Featured image at top: Jiajie Diao works in his lab. Photo/Colleen Kelley/UC Marketing + Brand