Neutron Autoradiography Combined With UV-C Sensitization: Toward the Intracellular Localization of Boron

GADAN M; LLOYD R; SAINT-MARIN G; OLIVERA MS; L. POLICASTRO; PORTU A

MICROSCOPY & MICROANALYSIS

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2019

1431-9276

Our group has reported the imprint formation of biological material on polycarbonate nuclear track detectors by UV-C exposure, which isused as an approach to simultaneously visualize cell imprints and nuclear tracks coming from the boron neutron capture reaction.Considering that the cell nucleus has a higher UV-C absorption than the cytoplasm and that hematoxylin preferentially stains the nucleus,we proposed to enhance the contrast between these two main cell structures by hematoxylin staining before UV-C sensitization. In thisstudy, several experiments were performed in order to optimize UV-C exposure parameters and chemical etching conditions for cell imprintformation using the SK-BR-3 breast cancer cell line. The proposed method improves significantly the resolution of the cell imprints. Itallows clear differentiation of the nucleus from the rest of the cell, together with nuclear tracks pits. Moreover, it reduces considerablythe UV-C exposure time, an important experimental issue. The proposed methodology can be applied to study the boron distribution independentlyfrom the chosen cell line and/or boron compounds.