Studies of inorganic crystals in biological tissue magnetite in human tumors

Abstract

Ferromagnetic materials, magnetite crystals, have been extracted and identified from magnetotactic bacteria, polyplacophoran mollusks (chitons), salmons, tuna and recently tissues of the human brain. Ferritin, the iron storage nonheme-protein contains hydrated iron oxide (Fe_2O_3 • nH_2O) in its core. It is suggested that this hydrated oxide in ferritin would be the precursor of magnetite in both magnetotactic bacteria and the chitons. Many studies have described that ferritin were related with cell proliferation, specially tumor cell growth. In this study, we attempted to investigate the presence of magnetite in tumor tissues. We report the first detection of magnetic materials in various human tumor tissues (melanoma, breast, ovary, testicle, sarcoma, meninginoma, glioblastoma, astrocytoma, glioma, metastasis) with the use of SQUID magnetometry. The magnetometory data for the magnetic materials are consistent with magnetite (Fe_3O_4). Its concentration of various tissue types were measured via sIRMs. Tumor tissues were also stained blue with the Perls staining method for detecting ferritin. Our experiments show that the distribution of magnetite and ferritin in tumor tissues might depend on the etiology of the tumor. Ferritin distribution as indicated through staining suggest an irregular pattern with distinctive foci. However, a spacial covariance between ferritin and magnetite was unable to demonstrate in this study.