Researchers at the University of California in San Diego have found an unusual ally in the search to make cancer diagnosis faster, more precise and more accessible worldwide: the Morpho butterfly. Known for its bright blue wings, the Morfo butterfly owes its brilliance not to pigments but to the microscopic structures that manipulate the light. Now, researchers are taking advantage of those same structures to obtain detailed ideas about the fibrous composition of cancer biopsy samples, without the need for chemical staining or expensive image equipment.
The findings are detailed in an article published in Advanced materials.
Fibrosis, the accumulation of fibrous tissue, is a key characteristic of many diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, heart disease and cancer. In oncology, evaluating the scope of fibrosis in a biopsy sample can help determine whether a patient’s cancer is at an early or advanced stage.
“The great challenge, however, is that it is extremely difficult to distinguish between these stages using current clinical methods,” said the senior author of the Lisa Poulikakos study, a professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UC School of Engineering of UC San Diego Jacobs. These methods are based on tissue staining to highlight key structures in tumor biopsy, but the results can be subjective: a pathologist could interpret a sample differently from another. And although there are more advanced image techniques that can provide richer details, they require expensive and specialized equipment that many clinics simply do not have.
That’s where Morpho butterfly enters. Poulikakos and his team discovered that by placing a biopsy sample on a Morpho butterfly wing and seeing it under a standard microscope, they can evaluate whether the structure of a tumor indicates early or late cancer, – without the need for spots or expensive image machines .
“We can apply this technique using standard optical microscopes that clinics already have,” said Poulikakos. “And it is more objective and quantitative than is currently available.”
The idea of this method came from Paula Kirya, a graduate student of mechanical engineering at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. Kirya had previously studied the wings of Morpho Butterfly and his optical properties while he was a university student researcher at Pasadena City College. When it was transferred to UC San Diego and joined the Poulikakos laboratory, where researchers build synthetic nanostructures to obtain images of biological tissues, recognized an opportunity.
“I had been imagining butterflies, studying how they react to different environments,” he said. “And when I saw what the laboratory was doing, I thought: ‘The morph naturally has this property, why not use it?'”
The researchers found that the Micro and Nanostructures of the wing respond strongly to the polarized light, a type of light that spreads in a specific direction. Collagen fibers, which are a key structural component of fibrotic tissue, also interact with polarized light, but their signals are weak. By placing a biopsy sample above a piece of a Morfo butterfly wing, the researchers amplified these signals, which facilitates the analysis of density and the arrangement of collagen fibers.
The resulting signals can be translated to a measure of how dense and organized are collagen fibers in the biopsy sample. To do this, the researchers developed a mathematical model based on the calculation of Jones, a method to analyze the polarized light. The model correlates the intensity of light with the density and the organization of collagen fibers, providing a quantifiable metric to evaluate fibrosis within the tissue.
Using this approach, the researchers analyzed dense human breast cancer biopsy samples and collagen co-authors and Jing Yang co-authors, a professor in the departments of Pharmacology and Pediatrics at the UC School of Medicine of the UC San Diego and Co-leader of the Biology and Cancer Signaling Program in Cancer Center, and Aida Mestre-Farrera, a scientist Postdoctoral in Yang group. Its results were comparable to conventional staining methods and an advanced method of high -cost images.
“Essentially, we are trying to expand these procedures with an alternative without spots that requires nothing more than a standard optical microscope and a piece of a morpho wing,” Kirya said. “In many parts of the world, the early detection of cancer is a challenge due to the limitations of resources. If we can provide a simpler and more accessible tool, we can help more patients to be diagnosed before their cancers reach aggressive stages,” .
While the current study focused on breast cancer, researchers believe that their technique could be applied to a wide range of fibrotic diseases.
“We are excited to take advantage of this technique for all types of tissue diagnoses,” Poulikakos said. “It was really surprising to see how well nature had already designed a solution through the wing of Morpho butterfly and its natural nanostructures. Facilities.”