Scientists have made a significant advancement in cancer treatment by developing a technique that allows for the tracking of chemotherapy drugs within cells. This innovative method addresses longstanding challenges in assessing drug effectiveness and ensuring uniform distribution among tumor cells, which often present a dense and complex environment.
The research team, led by Craig Richard, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL), and Pei-Hsuan Hsieh, a principal scientist at Eli Lilly and Company, has focused on a modified version of the commonly used chemotherapy drug, doxorubicin. This modified drug, known as DOX-IR, incorporates a metal carbonyl compound that enables the drug to be detected using infrared microscopy.
Innovative Tracking Technique
The transformation of doxorubicin into DOX-IR allows researchers to overcome previous limitations in drug detection. Traditional methods struggled to differentiate the chemical signals of doxorubicin from those of the surrounding cells. Richard explains, “Infrared spectroscopy can see doxorubicin’s chemical signature, but since it’s an organic molecule, its signal overlaps with that of cells. When it’s labeled, though, it stands out very clearly because of that metal carbonyl group.”
This modified drug emits a distinct signal that researchers can monitor as it penetrates cancer cells. In experiments, cells treated with DOX-IR displayed increased signals over time, indicating higher concentrations of the drug. This capability enables the measurement of drug levels within individual cells, offering a clearer understanding of its distribution and effectiveness.
Richard highlights the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of this advancement, stating, “You can take these metal carbonyls, and you can also give them signals to release the carbon monoxide that’s on them, which can be used as a treatment for other diseases including cancer.”
Challenges and Future Directions
Despite its promising results, the current methodology has limitations. Richard notes that the addition of the infrared label alters the drug’s behavior inside the cell, which may affect its therapeutic action. “The modified drug doesn’t go to the same places as unmodified doxorubicin,” he explains. However, he suggests that engineering a linkage that breaks under specific conditions could potentially restore doxorubicin’s normal activity while maintaining the infrared label.
The ability to utilize infrared spectroscopy to observe the behavior of DOX-IR within cells could revolutionize the way researchers evaluate treatment effectiveness and identify drug-resistant cells. Richard emphasizes the broader implications of this work, stating, “This gives researchers the template for how to do this with other drugs potentially.”
Richard’s research is part of a larger effort to improve cancer therapies. He obtained a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023 and focuses on developing infrared-active nanoparticle probes to study tumor microenvironments.
The findings of this study, titled “Monitoring Molecular Uptake and Cancer Cells’ Response by Development of Quantitative Drug Derivative Probes for Chemical Imaging,” have been published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. The research received support from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health.
As this research progresses, it holds the potential to pave the way for more personalized cancer therapies, enhancing the fight against a disease that affects millions worldwide. For further inquiries, Craig Richard can be reached at [email protected].
