Water dynamics in MCF-7 breast cancer cells: a neutron scattering descriptive study

Murillo L. Martins, Alexander B. Dinitzen, Eugene Mamontov, Svemir Rudić, José E.M. Pereira, Rasmus Hartmann-Petersen, Kenneth W. Herwig, Heloisa N. Bordallo

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21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Water mobility in cancer cells could be a powerful parameter to predict the progression or remission of tumors. In the present descriptive work, new insight into this concept was achieved by combining neutron scattering and thermal analyses. The results provide the first step to untangle the role played by water dynamics in breast cancer cells (MCF-7) after treatment with a chemotherapy drug. By thermal analyses, the cells were probed as micrometric reservoirs of bulk-like and confined water populations. Under this perspective we showed that the drug clearly alters the properties of the confined water. We have independently validated this idea by accessing the cellular water dynamics using inelastic neutron scattering. Finally, analysis of the quasi-elastic neutron scattering data allows us to hypothesize that, in this particular cell line, diffusion increases in the intracellular water in response to the action of the drug on the nanosecond timescale.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8704
JournalScientific Reports
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2019

Funding

We are grateful to Dr. Alexei Sokolov for his availability in providing useful insight on the relaxation data analysis, to Marianne Lund Jensen and Rodrigo Lima for their assistance during the thermoanalysis experiments and Marcella C. Berg for joining the BASIS experiments. We also acknowledge the support of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (ISIS Neutron and Muon Source) and the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) for providing the neutron research facilities used in this work. The neutron scattering experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Spallation Neutron Source were supported by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The thermoanalysis apparatus used in the work was financed by Carlsbergfondets (grants 2013_01_0589). This project has received funding from the Danscatt Program that supports researchers in Denmark performing experiments at large scale facilities. MLM is funded by FAPEG (20171026700070) and CNPQ (205609/2014-7 and 300509/2017-0). RHP is funded by the Danish Cancer Society, the Danish Council for Independent Research (Natural Sciences), the Lundbeck Foundation, the A.P. Møller Foundation for the Advancement of Medical Science, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation. JEMP’s research was supported through the Brazilian Science Without Borders (Process number 207740/2014-3) program.

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