FTIR Microspectroscopy as a new probe to study human uterine lesions: Characterization of tumor cell lines from uterine smooth muscle cells and evaluation of EPA and DHA in vitro treatments

During their life, women are likely to develop uterine diseases, which often compromise their fertile and perimenopausal age. Besides benign lesions like leiomyomas, several malignant neoplasms can occur, such as the uterine leiomyosarcoma, which represents the most frequent malignancy among the rarest uterine cancers. It presents several variants similar to both benign and malignant neoplasms, and sometimes it shares symptoms with the benign counterpart. In this scenario, for a correct diagnosis and a successful prognosis, it is mandatory to detect new reliable markers which strengthen histopathological outcomes and let define a more appropriate and less harmful therapy. Based on this concerning evidence, in the present study, Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy has been exploited at a cellular level on uterine leiomyoma and leiomyosarcoma cell lines to (1) identify specific spectral biomarkers able to distinguish between benign and malignant lesions, and (2) evaluate the efficacy of eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids (respectively EPA and DHA), already successfully tested. Results evidenced reliable differences in the spectral signature of benign and malignant cells, mainly in terms of lipids and nucleic acids composition. Moreover, even if EPA and DHA seemed to exert different effects on the tested cell lines, no cytotoxic and/or anti-apoptotic actions were observed after omega-3 based treatments.