Mass Spectrometry in Single Bladder Cancer Cells

The aim of this study is to determine the feasibility of using a novel mass spectrometry instrument to measure the intracellular concentration of chemotherapeutic drug within an active tumor cell. If successful, this technique could be applied to dosage streamlining in patients and customization of dosage based on individual tumor characteristics. It also opens the door to research on novel chemotherapy agents or agents not typically used in a specific malignancy to determine if therapeutic levels can be obtained in tumor cells.

Personalized chemotherapy is an evolving field with the underlying goal being minimization of side effects of treatment while maximizing net patient benefit for therapy. A key difficulty in personalized chemotherapy is that the determination of therapeutic benefit comes well after the administration of treatment has been completed. For most forms of chemotherapy there does not exist a laboratory study that can determine the concentration of therapeutic agent within the tumor itself and as such, real time dose adjustments are based only on toxicity, not on tumor penetrance.