Investigating How Chemoresistance Affects Drug Distribution in the Tumor Microenvironment

At the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, which took place in Tucson, Arizona, at the El Conquistador Tucson, a Hilton Resort, Sarah Theiner, a Sales Manager at Nu Instruments, was recognized as this year’s winner of the Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy award (1,2).

As part of our coverage of the Winter Conference, Spectroscopy sat down with Theiner for an exclusive interview that covered topics such as drug distribution in the tumor microenvironment and what her career transition was like going from the University of Vienna to Nu Instruments. Part I of our conversation with Theiner covered her reaction to winning the Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy award (2).

In this video segment, Theiner dives into the research that she conducted at the University of Vienna, which focused on how chemoresistance affects drug distribution in the tumor microenvironment.

Spectroscopy: When you were at the University of Vienna, what motivated you to investigate how intrinsic chemoresistance affects drug distribution within the tumor microenvironment, rather than focusing solely on cellular resistance mechanisms?

Sarah Theiner: When we started actually evaluating drug resistance into these cell culture models, we just used solution-based inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). It's a quick method to screen new drugs that we developed in our group. But of course, with the development of the high-resolution laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-TOFMS) methods, we are now able to also investigate cell interactions and also quantify the platinum uptake within different cell types. So, this actually gives us a better overview about resistance mechanisms that occur in the complex tumor microenvironment, because you can imagine you have just the two-dimensional (2D) cell culture systems, compared to the tumor microenvironment with all the different cell types, you have necrotic regions there. So of course, you want to know why your drug doesn't reach the target.

This interview clip is the second part of our interview with Theiner. To check out the rest of our coverage of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, click here.

References

(1) IASA, Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. IASA. Available at: https://iasa.world/winter-plasma-conference (accessed 2026-01-24).

(2) Wetzel, W. Sarah Theiner on Winning Spectroscopy’s 2026 Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy Award. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/sarah-theiner-on-winning-spectroscopy-s-2026-emerging-leader-in-atomic-spectroscopy-award (accessed 2026-01-24)