Understanding nanoscale structural changes can provide information about the physical state of cells/tissues. It has now been shown that increases in nanoscale structural alterations are associated with the progress of carcinogenesis in most cancer cases, including early carcinogenesis. Anti-cancerous therapies are designed to inhibit the growth of cancer cells; however, it is challenging to detect the efficacy of such drugs in the early stages of treatment. A unique method of assessing the impact of anti-cancerous drugs on cancerous cells/tissues is to probe the nanoscale structural alterations. In this paper, we study the effect of different anti-cancerous drugs on ovarian tumorigenic cells, using their nanoscale structural alterations as a biomarker. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging on thin cell sections is performed to obtain their nanoscale structures. The degree of nanoscale structural alterations of tumorigenic cells and anti-cancerous drug treated tumorigenic cells are quantified by using the recently developed inverse participation ratio (IPR) technique. Results show an increase in the degree of nanoscale fluctuations in tumorigenic cells relative to non-tumorigenic cells; then a near-reversal of the degree of fluctuation in tumorigenic cells to that in non-tumorigenic cells, following anti-cancerous drug treatment. These results support that the effect of anti-cancerous drugs in cancer treatment can be quantified by using the degree of nanoscale fluctuations in the cells via TEM imaging. Potential applications of the technique for cancer treatment are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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使用透射电子显微镜成像技术研究癌细胞中的纳米结构变化，以评估卵巢癌药物治疗。

了解纳米级结构变化可以提供有关细胞/组织物理状态的信息。现已显示，在大多数癌症病例中，包括早期致癌作用，纳米级结构改变的增加与致癌作用的进展有关。抗癌疗法旨在抑制癌细胞的生长。然而，在治疗的早期阶段检测此类药物的功效具有挑战性。评估抗癌药物对癌细胞/组织影响的独特方法是探查纳米结构的变化。在本文中，我们使用其纳米级结构改变作为生物标记物，研究了不同的抗癌药物对卵巢致瘤细胞的作用。对薄细胞切片进行透射电子显微镜（TEM）成像，以获得其纳米级结构。致瘤细胞和抗癌药物治疗的致瘤细胞的纳米级结构改变程度通过使用最近开发的逆参与比（IPR）技术进行定量。结果显示，相对于非致瘤细胞，致瘤细胞的纳米尺度波动程度增加；然后在抗癌药物治疗后，致瘤细胞的波动程度几乎与非致瘤细胞的波动程度相反。这些结果表明，可以通过TEM成像使用细胞中的纳米级波动程度来量化抗癌药物在癌症治疗中的作用。还讨论了该技术在癌症治疗中的潜在应用。