Joanna Depciuch

Simultaneous FTIR and Raman Spectroscopy in Endometrial Atypical Hyperplasia and Cancer

Currently, endometrial carcinoma (EC) is the most common genital cancer in high-income countries. Some types of endometrial hyperplasia (EH) may be progressing to this malignancy. The diagnosis of EC and EH is based on time consuming histopathology evaluation, which is subjective and causes discrepancies in reassessment. Therefore, there is a need to create methods of objective evaluation allowing the diagnosis of early changes. The study aimed to simultaneously asses Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy combined with multidimensional analysis to identify the tissues of endometrial cancer, atypical hyperplasia and the normal control group, and differentiate them. The results of FTIR and Raman spectroscopy revealed quantitative and qualitative changes in the nucleic acid and protein in the groups of cancer and atypical hyperplasia, in comparison with the control group. Changes in the lipid region were also observed in Raman spectra. Pearson correlation coefficient demonstrated a statistically significant correlation between Raman spectra for the cancer and atypical hyperplasia groups (0.747, p < 0.05) and for atypical hyperplasia and the controls (0.507, p < 0.05), while FTIR spectra demonstrated a statistically significant positive correlation for the same group as in Raman data and for the control and cancer groups (0.966, p < 0.05). To summarize, the method of spectroscopy enables differentiation of atypical hyperplasia and endometrial cancer tissues from the physiological endometrial tissue.

ROS-Mediated Apoptosis and Autophagy in Ovarian Cancer Cells Treated with Peanut-Shaped Gold Nanoparticles

Even with considerable improvement in treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer achieved in recent years, an increasing chemotherapy resistance and disease 5-year relapse is recorded for a majority part of patients that encourages the search for better therapeutic options. Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) due to plethora of unique physiochemical features are thoroughly tested as drug delivery, radiosensitizers, as well as photothermal and photodynamic therapy agents. Importantly, due to highly controlled synthesis, it is possible to obtain nanomaterials with directed size and shape. In this work, we developed novel elongated-type gold nanoparticles in the shape of nanopeanuts (AuP NPs) and investigated their cytotoxic potential against ovarian cancer cells SKOV-3 using colorimetric and fluorimetric methods, Western blot, flow cytometry, and fluorescence microscopy. Peanut-shaped gold nanoparticles showed high anti-cancer activity in vitro against SKOV-3 cells at doses of 1-5 ng/mL upon 72 hours treatment. We demonstrate that AuP NPs decrease the viability and proliferation capability of ovarian cancer cells by triggering cell apoptosis and autophagy, as evidenced by flow cytometry and Western blot analyses. The overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was noted to be a critical mediator of AuP NPs-mediated cell death. These data indicate that gold nanopeanuts might be developed as nanotherapeutics against ovarian cancer.