Rapid Inactivation of Pathogens on Microscope Slides: A Platform for Improving Mass Spectrometry for Imaging of Samples from Infected Tissue
Category: Research Poster
Author(s): Yvette Cruz
Presenter(s): Yvette Cruz
Molecular Imaging using Mass Spectrometry (MSI) enables identification of the changes in diseased versus healthy neighboring cells within a tissue sample, including demonstrating delays in drug delivery to sites of need for effective treatment. Despite this, MSI for infectious disease research is hampered by the need to inactivate pathogens within tissue samples before analysis. Current inactivation techniques utilize a stepwise process of freezing excised tissues, inactivation via UV, X-ray, or gamma irradiation, then processing samples for MSI. This is a laborious and time-consuming process and is not efficient for studying dynamic cellular interactions during time of tissue harvest. We hypothesize that alternate inactivation strategies can be conducted "on-slide" reducing the delay from tissue sample collection to MSI and improving the capture of dynamic interactions. In this study, we used Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), an attenuated M. bovis strain that can be manipulated in standard laboratory conditions to test our hypothesis. We tested UV radiation and Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) on slide inactivation methods and found that UV and VHP treatment sterilized the prepared slides. Our aim is to expand its application using virulent M. tuberculosis-infected tissue samples and ultimately other high containment pathogens.