Ion the Inside

Cancer chemotherapies often aim to destroy or disable cancer cells. But how and where drugs work inside cells is often predicted rather than observed. Here, a new technique called high-definition multiplex ion beam imaging reveals the precise location of tiny molecules. A beam of charged particles or ions, scans across the nucleus of this human cancer cell, releasing secondary ions – a slew of tell-tale particles that ping away when an ion beam hits. Pumped into a mass spectrometer, these act like chemical fingerprints, highlighting important structures like DNA (dark blue), regions where transcription is likely occurring (green) and nuclear speckles (purple). Building on this technique, researchers believe that cisplatin, a common anti-cancer drug, needs to move to these green and purple-coloured regions – finding new paths to these areas might be a way to battle resistant cancers.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video from work by Xavier Rovira-Clave and Sizun Jiang and colleagues
• Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, July 2021