This term summarizes a group of proteins that are present in all cells in all life forms and are induced by various types of environmental stresses like heat, cold or oxygen deprivation. HSP act like ‘chaperones,’controling shape and location of proteins inside cells exposed to physiological or stress conditions.
Published in Chapter:
Fluorescence Imaging of Mitochondrial Long-Term Depolarization in Cancer Cells Exposed to Heat-Stress
Cathrin Dressler (Laser- und Medizin-Technologie GmbH, Berlin, Germany), Olaf Minet (Charité Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, Germany), Urszula Zabarylo (Charité Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, Germany), and Jürgen Beuthan (Charité Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, Germany)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-076-9.ch038
Abstract
This chapter deals with the mitochondrias’ stress response to heat, which is the central agent of thermotherapy. Thermotherapies function by inducing lethal heat inside target tissues. Spatial and temporal instabilities of temperature distributions in targets require optimized treatment protocols and reliable temperature-control methods during thermotherapies. Since solid cancers present predominant targets to thermotherapy, we analyzed hyperthermic stress-induced effects on mitochondrial transmembrane potentials in breast cancer cells (MX1). Heat sensitivities and stress reactions might be extremely different among different tissue species and tissue dignities; therefore it is very important to investigate tissue-specific stress responses systematically. Even though this chapter provides minimal information only to the enlightenment of systemic cellular heat stress mechanisms, it may contribute to deepening the basic knowledge about systemic stress responses. In addition, the data presented here might support optimizing of treatment protocols applied during thermotherapy, particularly LITT and hyperthermia.