Integration of near-infrared spectroscopy and aquaphotomics for discrimination of cultured cancerous cells using phenol red

Abstract

Presently, mammalian cell lines are the most utilized hosts for the production of biopharmaceuticals. Optical spectroscopy is extensively used for the physical or physiological measurements of cellular features to study the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of different cancers. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and aquaphotomics are ubiquitous techniques increasingly used for nondestructive assessment. The key objective of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of absorbance spectra in the NIR region (700–1100 ​nm) coupled with aquaphotomics analysis to classify the different cancerous cell lines. Human cervix adenocarcinoma cells (HeLa) and human prostate carcinoma (DU145) were the cancerous cell lines, while normal mouse skin fibroblast (L929 ​cell line) was used as a reference for the assessment. The NIR absorbance spectra for 50 ​000 to 275 ​000 ​cells of L929, DU145, and HeLa cell lines in culture media prepared with and without phenol red (PhR) were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and soft independent modeling of class analogies (SIMCA) models. The PCA of the spectral absorbance data revealed a clear discrimination between the three cell lines, with subgroups detected based on the presence or absence of PhR in the culture medium. The SIMCA method showed a high accuracy of classification, where larger class distances were obtained among the non-stained cells.