Raman spectroscopy and SERS analysis of ovarian tumour derived exosomes (TEXs): a preliminary study

Abstract

Here we report a preliminary study based on the application of Raman spectroscopy and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to investigate the compositional differences between exosomes derived from ovarian carcinoma cells (cell line A2780) grown in normoxia (normal O₂ conditions) and hypoxia (1% O₂ conditions). Exosomes are integral to cell signalling, and are of interest in the study of how cells communicate within their environment. We are particularly interested in identifying whether hypoxia induced senescent cells can communi- cate via exosomes with neighbouring tumour cells, thereby causing them to become senescent and therefore radio and chemo resistant. With this goal in mind, we performed a preliminary study on the application of Raman spectroscopy and SERS to analyse the biomolecular fingerprint of both groups of exosomes and to investigate whether there exists a different biomolecular composition associated with exosomes derived from hypoxic cells in comparison to those from normoxic cells. We also applied multivariate statistical techniques for the classification of both groups of exosomes.