Abstract

Dear All

Amanda Foust will give this seminar ‘Voltage imaging reveals the dynamic electrical signatures of human breast cancer cells’ in West Hub (West 2) at 12pm on 6th October.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/a.foust

Abstract Cancer cells feature a resting membrane potential (Vm) that is depolarized compared to normal cells, and express active ionic conductances, which factor directly in their pathophysiological behavior. Despite similarities to ‘excitable’ tissues, relatively little is known about cancer cell Vm dynamics. Here high-throughput, cellular-resolution Vm imaging revealed that Vm fluctuates dynamically in several breast cancer cell lines compared to non-cancerous MCF -10A cells. We optically characterized Vm fluctuations of hundreds of human triple-negative breast cancer MDA -MB-231 cells. Their Vm exhibited spontaneous, transient hyperpolarizations inhibited by the voltage-gated sodium channel blocker tetrodotoxin, and by calcium-activated potassium channel inhibitors apamin and iberiotoxin. The Vm of MCF -10A cells was comparatively static, but fluctuations increased following treatment with transforming growth factor-β1, a canonical inducer of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. These data suggest a correlation between cancer processes and Vm dynamics, in addition to previously measured depolarized resting Vm. Moreover, our Vm imaging platform provides a new avenue for cellular-resolution high throughput characterization of heterogeneous cancer cell electrical phenotypes.