Abstract

To be considered as an in vitro companion diagnostics technique to screen for personalised therapies, Raman micro-spectroscopy should be able to monitor sub cellular interaction with chemotherapeutic drugs and to characterise cellular resistance. Investigations demonstrate the ability of Raman micro-spectroscopy not only to track the sub cellular accumulation of the drug as a function of time, but also to identify its mechanism of action, the subsequent cellular response and to identify cellular resistance. Despite the fact that different cell lines show different chemotherapeutic resistance, the chemical binding signature appears to be identical for anti-cancer drugs which belong to the same chemotherapeutic group, with implications of different mechanisms of action as a function of time and dose.

Keywords: Raman micro-spectroscopy; Chemotherapeutic drugs; Mechanism of action; Cellular effects; Resistance; Companion diagnostic