Use of Raman microspectroscopy to score the malignancy of breast cancer cells

It has been described that benign MCF10A breast cancer cell line suffers phenotypic changes toward malignancy when are cultured in sparse conditions. Using Raman spectroscopy with an InVia Raman microscope (Renishaw) with a backscattered configuration, we have studied the metabolic changes of confluent and sparse MCF10A cell cultures. We used Principal Component Analysis and Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analyses to assess the different profiling of the metabolic composition of breast cancer cells. The results indicated that Raman spectroscopy together with multivariate analysis is a useful technique to distinguish metabolic changes in malignant transformation. The identification of new metabolites, implementing the catalogue on the characterization of the different phenotypes associated to cell malignancy using Raman spectroscopy is under study.