Functional Interfaces

The hand-foot-syndrome presents a severe dermal side-effect of chemotherapeutic cancer treatment. The cause for this side-effect is the elimination of systemically administered chemotherapeutics with the sweat. Transported to the skin surface the drugs subsequently penetrate into the skin like topically applied substance. Upon accumulation of the chemotherapeutics in the skin the drugs destroy cells and tissue – in the same way as they are supposed to act in destroying cancer cells. Aiming at the development of strategies to illuminate the molecular mechanism underlying the hand-foot-syndrome (and, in a second step, strategies to prevent this sever side-effect), it might be important to evaluate the concentration and distribution of chemotherapeutics and anti-oxidants in the human skin. The latter can be estimated by the carotenoid concentration, as carotenoids serve as marker substances for the dermal antioxidative status. Following the objectives outlined above, this contribution presents a spectroscopic study aiming at the detection and quantification of carotenoids and selected chemotherapeutics in human skin. To this end spontaneous Raman scattering and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microspectroscopy are combined with two-photon excited fluorescence. While the latter technique is restricted to the detection of fluorescent chemotherapeutics, e.g. doxorubicin, the vibrational spectroscopic techniques can – in principle – be applied to any analyte molecules. Furthermore, we will present monitoring of doxorubicin uptake during life-cell experiments.