Vibrational spectroscopy imaging to identify biomarkers of cell and tissue response to radiation therapy

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Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. About half of all cancer patients will receive radiation therapy where the goal is to maximize cancer cell death using ionizing radiation while minimizing damage to healthy cells and tissue. Despite recent advances, a major challenge for radiation therapy is that of radiation resistance resulting in cancer recurrence. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge of the mechanisms causing cancer cells to become resistant to ionizing radiation. A major cause for this is the lack of existing techniques to detect radiation-induced biochemical changes in cells and tissue with high-spatial resolution. Our goal for this Alliance International Catalyst project is to develop novel optical imaging techniques based on vibrational spectroscopy for use in the understanding of the radiobiological response with sub-cellular resolution. Vibrational spectroscopy comprises a suite of complementary techniques such as Raman micro-spectroscopy (µRS), stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS) and Infrared absorption micro-spectroscopy (IRMS)) . Utilizing laser light to excite vibrations of molecular bonds specific to cells or tissue, these imaging methods are non-destructive and non-invasive, and also do not require any external contrast agents. We will collaborate to develop experiment design, optical imaging parameters and procedures for data analysis. We will generate information that is validated independently across three laboratories as follows: SRS imaging at Carleton University; IRMS imaging at Technological University of Dublin; and µRS and enhanced SRS imaging at University de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. Research trainees will benefit from the rich international training environments offered by virtue of the complementary equipment, skills and expertise of the research team members, in addition to having access to a large pool of irradiated cell and tissue samples.In the long-term, future experiments will provide detailed understanding of the mechanisms of biological response to RT, thus enabling the development of personalized RT.