Quantitative Imaging of Intracellular Density with Ratiometric Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy

Flow modeling and structural characterization in fungal pellets

Fungal pellets are hierarchical systems that can be found in an ample variety of applications. Modeling transport phenomena in this type of systems is a challenging but necessary task to provide knowledge-based processes that improve the outcome of their biotechnological applications. In this work, an upscaled model for total mass and momentum transport in fungal pellets is implemented and analyzed, using elements of the volume averaging and adjoint homogenization methods departing from the governing equations at the microscale in the intracellular and extracellular phases. The biomass is assumed to be composed of a non-Newtonian fluid and the organelles impervious to momentum transport are modeled as a rigid solid phase. The upscaled equations contain effective-medium coefficients, which are predicted from the solution of adjoint closure problems in a three-dimensional periodic domains representative of the microstructure. The construction of these domains was performed for Laccaria trichodermophora based on observations of actual biological structures. The upscaled model was validated with direct numerical simulations in homogeneous portions of the pellets core. It is shown that no significant differences are observed when the dolipores are open or closed to fluid flow. By comparing the predictions of the average velocity in the extracellular phase resulting from the upscaled model with those from the classical Darcy equation (i.e., assuming that the biomass is a solid phase) the contribution of the intracellular fluid phase was evidenced. This work sets the foundations for further studies dedicated to transport phenomena in this type of systems.

Measuring single-cell density with high throughput enables dynamic profiling of immune cell and drug response from patient samples

Cell density, the ratio of cell mass to volume, is an indicator of molecular crowding and therefore a fundamental determinant of cell state and function. However, existing density measurements lack the precision or throughput to quantify subtle differences in cell states, particularly in primary samples. Here we present an approach for measuring the density of 30,000 single cells per hour with a precision of 0.03% (0.0003 g/mL) by integrating fluorescence exclusion microscopy with a suspended microchannel resonator. Applying this approach to human lymphocytes, we discovered that cell density and its variation decrease as cells transition from quiescence to a proliferative state, suggesting that the level of molecular crowding decreases and becomes more regulated upon entry into the cell cycle. Using a pancreatic cancer patient-derived xenograft model, we found that the ex vivo density response of primary tumor cells to drug treatment can predict in vivo tumor growth response. Our method reveals unexpected behavior in molecular crowding during cell state transitions and suggests density as a new biomarker for functional precision medicine.

Facilitated Transport of EGFR Inhibitors Plays an Important Role in Their Cellular Uptake

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a transmembrane protein commonly targeted by tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) as a front-line therapy for patients with many cancers including nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Effective treatment requires efficient intracellular drug uptake and target binding. However, despite the recent success in the development of new TKI drugs, the mechanisms of uptake for many TKIs are still poorly understood due to the difficulty in imaging and measuring nonfluorescent drug molecules at a subcellular resolution. It has previously been shown that weakly basic TKI drugs are sequestered in lysosomes. Leveraging this property, we apply hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering imaging to directly visualize and quantify two Food and Drug Administration-approved EGFR inhibitor drugs (lapatinib and afatinib) inside living cells and the changes in their cellular uptake upon the addition of organic cation transporter inhibitors. These single-cell quantitative measurements provide new insight into the role of membrane transporters in the uptake of TKI drugs in living cells.

Simultaneous Dual-Band Hyperspectral Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy with Femtosecond Optical Parametric Oscillators

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy is a label-free quantitative optical technique for imaging molecular distributions in cells and tissues by probing their intrinsic vibrational frequencies. Despite its usefulness, existing SRS imaging techniques have limited spectral coverage due to either a wavelength tuning constraint or narrow spectral bandwidth. High-wavenumber SRS imaging is commonly used to map lipid and protein distribution in biological cells and visualize cell morphology. However, to detect small molecules or Raman tags, imaging in the fingerprint region or "silent" region, respectively, is often required. For many applications, it is desirable to collect SRS images in two Raman spectral regions simultaneously for visualizing the distribution of specific molecules in cellular compartments or providing accurate ratiometric analysis. In this work, we present an SRS microscopy system using three beams generated by a femtosecond oscillator to acquire hyperspectral SRS image stacks in two arbitrary vibrational frequency bands, between 650-3280 cm-1, simultaneously. We demonstrate potential biomedical applications of the system in investigating fatty acid metabolism, cellular drug uptake and accumulation, and lipid unsaturation level in tissues. We also show that the dual-band hyperspectral SRS imaging system can be adapted for the broadband fingerprint region hyperspectral imaging (1100-1800 cm-1) by simply adding a modulator.