Background

What is Triple Negative Breast Cancer?

Named after the lack of, or negative expression of three receptors: estrogen, progesterone, and hormone epidermal growth factor. This makes TNBC resilient to horone therapy or receptor targeting drugs.
TNBC is notoriously hard to detect when compared to non-triple negative varieties. Standard cancer diagnostic methods such as mammography, ultrasound, or MRIs are ineffective in differentiating triple-negative breast cancer.

SRS is a kind of Raman Spectroscopy, a vibrational microscopy technique that uses scattered light to measure the vibrational frequency of a biomolecule of interest.
Stimulated Raman Scattering uses two vibrational beams, a Stokes Beam and a Pump Beam. The difference in frequency between these two beams is calibrated to match the vibrational frequency of proteins and lipids.
Using Deuterated Water (D2O) as a probe, the Raman spectra can be supplemented with visual maps of protein and lipid metabolism across the tumor matrix in a method called DO-SRS.
Different biomolecule concentrations can be shown by changing the stimulated wavelength of the beams. Dividing newly synthesized lipid / protein concentration over total lipid / protein concentration results in a lipid or protein turnover rate respectively.

TPF is a fluorescence technique that is especially advantageous due to its additive input from both photons. The stimulated wavelength is expectedly longer, and can penetrate further into the tumor tissue without the scattering that blurs single-photon data.
Both FADH and NADH concentration can be measured by two-photon fluorescence for their importance in cell metabolism signaling and glycolysis.
Redox ratio is plotted by dividing NADH over FADH concentration. A higher redox value can be assumed to correlate with a more agressive cancer subtype and faster tumor proliferation.

Makes for a label-free, highly specified imaging method for selected molecules, specifically myosin, microtubules, and collagen fibers. Other biomolecules within the tissue are completely ommited.
Volumetric images may be generated by stacking cross sections of collagen density from the tumor center. Curvature of the fibers can then be measured, which has been known to correlate with wider tumor growth, due to the increased flexibility of the extracellular matrix.

Made by Daniel Cao

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