Neurodevelopmental Process Monitoring of Cytosine Arabinoside-Exposed Neurons Using Raman Spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy is used to monitor the development of live neurons exposed to cytosine arabinoside (ara-C). Ara-C is widely used to culture neurons and exclude non-neuronal cells. In this study, Raman spectra obtained from neurons exposed to ara-C were plotted using an analytical model of neuronal development to evaluate the impact of ara-C on neuronal development. After two days of culturing, neurons were exposed to ara-C for 24 h at final concentrations of 0 (control), 5, and 25 μM. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to build an analytical model for evaluating neurodevelopmental disorders caused by ara-C treatment. We projected the Raman spectra obtained from ara-C-treated cells onto the control group dataset. The distribution of PC1 scores for neurons exposed to ara-C at a final concentration of 5 μM was not significantly different from that of the control group. In contrast, under a final concentration of 25 μM, the data population at 10 and 15 days of culturing overlapped significantly with that of neurons at 4 days of normal culturing. These results suggest that Raman spectroscopy can detect very small physiological alterations in the neurons even after a short-term exposure (24 h) of ara-C. Our analytical method has high potential to evaluate the developmental stages for living neurons under exposure to chemicals.