Mikala Egeblad observed the action film of tumour cells by recording their landscapes inside live mice. In the previous study, cells stayed still, frozen on microscope slides, but now viewing them in a living animal brings cells to life. “You turn on the microscope and look in the live mouse and suddenly these same cells are running around like crazy,” says Egeblad, a cancer researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “It really changed my thinking.” 4μ8C
Intravital imaging involves focusing powerful microscopes directly onto exposed tissue in a live mouse. Microscopy technology, In combination with markers, make this approach powerful. A growing library of molecular makers are available to enhance the color identification and enable researchers to visualize different types of cells and structure, such as immune-system cells. Novel technique offer the chance to spy on the action of individual tumour cells, and investigators thereby utilize relative clues to hypothesis about how cancers grow ,spread and resist treatment. As an promising approach, Tracking Cancer in Live Animals over Time(TCLAT, also called intravital imaging) allows biologists to piece together timelines for key cellular and molecular events, and zoom in some lesion cells that drive the disease or resist treatment.
Recording cancer response to drug
Some scientists are using intravital imaging to track cancer drugs in the body, and to explore why some drug treatments fail. Cancer biologists typically test the effect of chemotherapies in vivo by measuring changes in cancer growth and size in mice. Intravital imaging gives a more direct view, revealing which cells in a lesion take up the drugs, and whether those cells live or die.
Egeblad and her team have made films of doxorubicin, a naturally fluorescent cancer drug, as it infiltrated mammary tumours in mice. They were surprised by the degree of variability — even within small regions of the tumour — in the amount of the drug that got into the cells, and in the number of cells that died.
Viewing action film of tumour cells help aware that the microenvironment, not just genetics, can influence cancer. The further study is an opportunity to reply the questions with deep and broad insights: how do different components of the tumour and its environment co-evolve?
A person's fertility during and after a cancer diagnosis is associated with cancer survivorship, especially for those patients younger than 30 years. With long-term survival rates, they will inevitably face reproductive issues because some types of cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, may cause temporary or permanent infertility.
Influence of cancer treatment on fertility
If a female cancer survivor want to conceive spontaneously, she will require sufficient ovarian follicular reserve, a uterus that supports a developing fetus, and functional organ systems. While cancer and related treatments can potentially disrupt any aspect of this delicate balance and limit a patient's reproductive potential.
Treatment-related infertility is reported to be significantly related with survivors' quality of life. For some patients, physical changes make it more difficult to conceive a child, even leading to a complete, permanent loss of fertility. Thus younger cancer patients struggle to identify themselves as normal, or the potential for future fertility, and then feel relaxed. In this context, a fertility preservation consultation may be a source of hope.
Tackle fertility issue
Appropriate patients are referred to fertility specialists for further counseling and fertility preservation. The standard practice investigators take is the cryopreservation of sperm, oocyte, and embryo according to existing guidelines. Since a decline in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes following cancer treatment is well documented, it is imperative to the success of fertility preservation that embryos or oocytes are preserved prior to the initiation of cancer treatment.
Both embryos or oocytes cryopreservation require the use of IVF, which enables patients to potentially take advantage of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a method of screening embryos or oocytes for genetic abnormalities before transfer into the uterus. While most cancers arise sporadically, 5% to 10% of cancer diagnoses are inherited through currently recognized genetic cancer syndromes.
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