Improving Leukaemia diagnosis and management with Selected Ion Flow Tube Mass Spectrometry and vibrational spectroscopy techniques

Abstract

Leukaemia is 11th most common cancer worldwide, associated with poor prognosis. The 10 years’ survival for leukaemia is between 44% - 47%. One of the main reasons for this is the disease being diagnosed in late stages. Most of leukaemia screening techniques are invasive or give radiation. It is therefore obvious to improve prognosis and refine diagnostic techniques for early detection, and better management of its therapeutic response. Spectroscopic and spectrometric techniques are widely used by a huge group of scientists; as biochemical analysis of the disease, may provide biochemical signatures to be used in diagnostics and management of the disease. In this work, the feasibility of measuring both qualitatively and quantitatively VOCs released by PBMC, leukaemia cells and BM cells in vitro has been shown. There are clear differences in the VOCs profile even among different leukaemia cells lines as well as from leukaemia cells exposed to drugs, PBMCs and bone marrow. These differences in the VOCs release could be exploited towards a clinical application of SIFT-MS in the diagnosis and therapeutic response of the disease. Direct sampling is the most convenient method of sampling, which could avoid loss of the many important VOCs by diffusion and/or absorption. Since it is not very easy to obtain
direct breath, appropriate storage of exhaled breath and transportation are very important issues to be considered. My study proved that stability over time might vary for different VOCs, especially those present in smaller concentrations. The addition of Imatinib or Nilotinib to K562 cell clones induces changes in cell biology and cellular structure which translates into changes in the S-FTIR spectra and Raman Spectra of the cells. There are remarkable differences in the biochemical composition of cells incubated at different drug concentrations and at different levels of oxygen.
Further studies are needed to confirm these changes in the spectra.