Scientists from the UK and Japan have discovered a way to identify pre-cancerous stem cells in the eye using absorbance spectra data.
Cancerous tumours in the cornea can cause loss of vision and, if left untreated, can become aggressive. Treatment is to cut out the cancerous cells but there is often a high chance of the disease recurring. Identifying normal tissue that has the potential to become cancerous prior to treatment could ensure complete removal and lower the risk of cancer reoccurring after treatment.
Despite decades of intense research, there are currently very few proficient stem cell biomarkers for the cornea. Now a team lead by Frank Martin at the University of Lancaster, UK, have used the sensitive and high-throughput approach of synchrotron-based Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy to create an image map of cornea samples to recognise differences between cell types and highlight prospective biomarkers.
To read Jennifer Newton’s full Highlights in Chemical Biology article, please click here: Looking cancer in the eye
Evidence for a stem-cell lineage in corneal squamous cell carcinoma using synchrotron-based Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy and multivariate analysis
Jemma G. Kelly, Takahiro Nakamura, Shigeru Kinoshita, Nigel J. Fullwood and Francis L. Martin, Analyst, 2010
DOI: 10.1039/c0an00507j
