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J. Rubin kan syfta till Jenny Rubin, men det fanns fler J. Rubin i katalogen som skulle kunna stämma.

Analysis of vesicle formation and degradation is a central issue in autophagy research and microscopy imaging is revolutionizing the study of such dynamic events inside living cells. A limiting factor is the need for labeling techniques that are labor intensive, expensive, and not always completely reliable. To enable label-free analyses we introduced a generic computational algorithm, the label-free vesicle detector (LFVD), which relies on a matched filter designed to identify circular vesicles within cells using only phase-contrast microscopy images. First, the usefulness of the LFVD is illustrated by presenting successful detections of autophagy modulating drugs found by analyzing the human colorectal carcinoma cell line HCT116 exposed to each substance among 1266 pharmacologically active compounds. Some top hits were characterized with respect to their activity as autophagy modulators using independent in vitro labeling of acidic organelles, detection of LC3-II protein, and analysis of the autophagic flux. Selected detection results for 2 additional cell lines (DLD1 and RKO) demonstrate the generality of the method. In a second experiment, label-free monitoring of dose-dependent vesicle formation kinetics is demonstrated by recorded detection of vesicles over time at different drug concentrations. In conclusion, label-free detection and dynamic monitoring of vesicle formation during autophagy is enabled using the LFVD approach introduced.

Drug induced changes in mammalian cell line models have already been extensively profiled at the systemic mRNA level and subsequently used to suggest mechanisms of action for new substances as well as to support drug repurposing, i.e. identifying new potential indications for drugs already licensed for other pharmacotherapy settings. The seminal work in this field, which includes a large database and computational algorithms for pattern matching, is known as the “Connectivity Map” (CMap). The potential of similar exercises at the metabolite level is, however, still largely unexplored. Only recently the first high throughput metabolomic assay pilot study was published, involving screening of metabolic response to a set of 56 kinase inhibitors in a 96-well format. Here we report results from a separately developed metabolic profiling assay, which leverages 1H NMR spectroscopy to the quantification of metabolic changes in the HCT116 colorectal cancer cell line, in response to each of 26 compounds. These agents are distributed across 12 different pharmacological classes covering a broad spectrum of bioactivity. Differential metabolic profiles, inferred from multivariate spectral analysis of 18 spectral bins, allowed clustering of most tested drugs according to their respective pharmacological class. A more advanced supervised analysis, involving one multivariate scattering matrix per pharmacological class and using only 3 spectral bins (three metabolites), showed even more distinct pharmacology-related cluster formations. In conclusion, this kind of relatively fast and inexpensive profiling seems to provide a promising alternative to that afforded by mRNA expression analysis, which is relatively slow and costly. As also indicated by the present pilot study, the resulting metabolic profiles do not seem to provide as information rich signatures as those obtained using systemic mRNA profiling, but the methodology holds strong promise for significant refinement.