Abstract
The severity of the cancer statistics around the globe and the complexity involving the behavior of cancer cells inevitably calls for contributions from multidisciplinary areas of research. As such, materials science became a powerful asset to support biological research in comprehending the macro and microscopic behavior of cancer cells and untangling factors that may contribute to their progression or remission. The contributions of cellular water dynamics in this process have always been debated and, in recent years, experimental works performed with Quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) brought new perspectives to these discussions. In this review, we address these works and highlight the value of QENS in comprehending the role played by water molecules in tumor cells and their response to external agents, particularly chemotherapy drugs. In addition, this paper provides an overview of QENS intended for scientists with different backgrounds and comments on the possibilities to be explored with the next-generation spectrometers under construction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 654 |
| Journal | Medicina (Lithuania) |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2022 |
Funding
Funding: This work was supported as part of the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport (FIRST) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC0205CH11231. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for U.S. DOE under Contract No. DEAC05-00OR22725. HNB received funding from the Danscatt Program that supports researchers in Denmark performing experiments at large scale facilities and from the Carlsbergfondets (grants 2013_01_0589).
Keywords
- cancer cells
- quasielastic neutron scattering
- water dynamics
