ToF-SIMS as a tool for metabolic profiling small biomolecules in cancer systems

Journal article, 2013

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is emerging as a tool for studying the metabolism of disease. ToF-SIMS enables chemical specificity in addition to high spatial resolution imaging of biological samples from cells to tissue. Here, ToF-SIMS has been used to investigate the metabolic regulation of hypoxia-induced chemoresistance to doxorubicin treatment using multicellular tumour spheroids. Imaging principal component analysis (PCA) was used as a tool to identify the regions of chemistry present within the image that differ as a result of drug treatment. A series of metabolite ToF-SIMS spectra were acquired, which were used to identify quasi-molecular ions and fragments correlated to the PCA loading plots. Metabolite patterns have been identified as potential biomarkers of hypoxia-induced chemoresistance.