Intrinsic electrical activity drives small-cell lung cancer progression.

Elevated or ectopic expression of neuronal receptors promotes tumour progression in many cancer types; neuroendocrine (NE) transformation of adenocarcinomas has also been associated with increased aggressiveness. Whether the defining neuronal feature, namely electrical excitability, exists in cancer cells and impacts cancer progression remains mostly unexplored. Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an archetypal example of a highly aggressive NE cancer and comprises two major distinct subpopulations: NE cells and non-NE cells.

Semi-automated quantification of living cells with internalized nanostructures.

Background: Nanostructures fabricated by different methods have become increasingly important for various applications in biology and medicine, such as agents for medical imaging or cancer therapy. In order to understand their interaction with living cells and their internalization kinetics, several attempts have been made in tagging them. Although methods have been developed to measure the number of nanostructures internalized by the cells, there are only few approaches aimed to measure the number of cells that internalize the nanostructures, and they are usually limited to fixed-cell studies.