Optical study of chemotherapy efficiency in cancer treatment via intracellular structural disorder analysis using partial wave spectroscopy.

As cancer progresses, macromolecules, such as DNA, RNA or lipids, inside cells undergo spatial structural rearrangements and alterations. Mesoscopic light transport-based optical partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) was recently introduced to quantify changes in the nanoscale structural disorder in biological cells. The PWS measurement is performed using a parameter termed as "disorder strength" (L ), which represents the degree of nanoscale structural disorder inside the cells. It was shown that cancerous cells have higher disorder strength than normal cells. In this work, we first used the PWS to analyze the hierarchy of different types of prostate cancer cells, namely, C4-2, DU-145 and PC-3, by quantifying their average disorder strengths. Results expectedly showed that L values increases in accordance with the increasing aggressiveness/tumorigenicity levels of these cells. Using the L parameter, we then analyzed the chemoresistance properties of these prostate cancer cells to docetaxel drug compared to their chemosensitivity. Results show that chemoresistant cancer cells have increased L values, that is, higher disorder strength, relative to chemosensitive cancer cells. Thus, use of the L metric can be effective in determining the efficacy of particular chemotherapy.