New look inside human breast ducts with Raman imaging. Raman candidates as diagnostic markers for breast cancer prognosis: Mammaglobin, palmitic acid and sphingomyelin

• Carotenoids, mammaglobin, palmitic acid, sphingomyelin as key molecular targets in ductal breast cancer have been identified.
• The composition of the epithelial cells surrounding the lumen of the cancerous duct changes in comparison with a normal duct.
• In contrast to the normal duct there is a complete depletion of carotenoids in the cancerous duct.
• The cancerous duct contains smaller amount of monounsaturated fatty acids than the normal duct dominated by oleic acid.
• For the cancerous duct a higher level of saturated lipids and sphingomyelin compared to the normal one is observed.

Looking inside the human body fascinated mankind for thousands of years. Current diagnostic and therapy methods are often limited by inadequate sensitivity, specificity and spatial resolution. Raman imaging may bring revolution in monitoring of disease and treatment. The main advantage of Raman imaging is that it gives spatial information about various chemical constituents in defined cellular organelles in contrast to conventional methods (liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry, NMR, HPLC) that rely on bulk or fractionated analyses of extracted components. We demonstrated how Raman imaging can drive the progress on breast cancer just unimaginable a few years ago. We looked inside human breast ducts answering fundamental questions about location and distribution of various biochemical components inside the lumen, epithelial cells of the duct and the stroma around the duct during cancer development. We have identified Raman candidates as diagnostic markers for breast cancer prognosis: carotenoids, mammaglobin, palmitic acid and sphingomyelin as key molecular targets in ductal breast cancer in situ, and propose the molecular mechanisms linking oncogenes with lipid programming.

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