Kinetic analysis of lipid metabolism in live breast cancer cells via nonlinear optical microscopy

Combining coherent Raman scattering microscopy and deuterium labeling provides insight into metabolism in live cancer cells during cancer development and progression. The dynamic data is modeled with Michaelis-Menten-kinetics to quantify lipid synthesis and utilization in cancer cells. Changes in lipid levels are found to originate from de novo lipid synthesis using glucose as a source. In this work, we isolate fatty acid synthesis/consumption rates and elucidated effects of altered lipid metabolism in T47D breast cancer cells in response to estradiol stimulation and etomoxir treatment, dynamic processes that cannot be easily observed without the application of appropriate models.