Visualization Of Tumor Microenvironment Based On Multiphoton Microscopy

Targeting tumor microenvironment has the characteristics of high efficiency, low toxicity and broad-spectrum, which has become a novel approach for cancer therapy. Nowadays, many imaging modalities have employed in the investigation of tumor microenvironment, such as positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, fluorescence intravital microscopy and dynamic light scattering. However, these imaging modalities are not capable of imaging with high resolution.Multiphoton microscopy is a kind of nonlinear optical technique, which is a powerful tool with advantages of high resolution, being label-free and less photo-damage. In this work, we investigated different tumor microenvironment of colorectal submucosa and mammary gland. In addition, we analysed the collagen content and orientation index in tumor microenvironment. These studies demonstrated that in the different tumor microenvironment of colorectal submucosa, the structure of tumor microenvironment become different. And the collagen fibers were reduced and arranged more disordered during the tumor progression. Similary, in the different tumor microenvironment of mammary gland, the morphology of ducts and collagen fibers were changed. These results suggested that multiphoton microscopy has the ability to visualize the tumor microenvironment and quantify content and orientation index of collagen during tumor progression. Therefore this technique is a powerful imaging tool for the investigation of targeting tumor microenvironment for cancer therapy.