The metabolic plasticity of cancer cells is considered a highly advantageous phenotype that is crucial for disease progression and acquisition of treatment resistance. A better understanding of cancer metabolism and its adaptability after treatments is vital to develop more effective therapies. To screen novel therapies and combination regimens, three-dimensional (3D) culture models of cancers are attractive platforms as they recapitulate key features of cancer. By applying non-perturbative intensity-based redox imaging combined with high-throughput image analysis, we demonstrated metabolic heterogeneity in various 3D culture models of pancreatic cancer. Photodynamic therapy and oxaliplatin chemotherapy, two cancer treatments with relevance to pancreatic cancer, induced perturbations in redox state in 3D microtumor cultures of pancreatic cancer. In an orthotopic mouse model of pancreatic cancer, a similar disruption in redox homeostasis was observed on ex vivo slices following photodynamic therapy in vivo. Taken together, redox imaging on cancer tissues combined with high-throughput analysis can elucidate dynamic spatiotemporal changes in metabolism following treatment, which will benefit the design of new metabolism-targeted therapeutic approaches.
Keywords: automated image analysis; metabolomics; oncology; oxidative phosphorylation; reactive oxygen species; two-photon excited fluorescence microscopy.