Raman spectroscopy cancer studies

Since the 1990s several groups have used Raman spectroscopy to distinguish between normal and neoplastic tissue. The first studies looked at differentiating between normal tissue and advanced cancers in the breast [2] and... 

The HCA method, which uses any of a variety of multivariate distance calculations to identify similar spectra, has found little use in Raman spectroscopy, although it could be of use in the growing analysis of complicated systems in which a large heterogeneous sample set is being analyzed. A study of spruce needles by Krizova et al. [54] and an investigation of cancerous skin lesions by Fendel and Schrader [55] are two examples showing the modest power of HCA. 

IR Nabiev, H Morjani, M Manfait. Selective analysis of antitumor drug-interaction with living cancer cells as probed by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Eur Biophys J 19 311-316, 1991. IR Nabiev, I Chourpa, M Manfait. Comparative studies of antitumour DNA intercalating agents, aclacinomycin and saintropin, by means of surface enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy. J Phys Chem 98 1344-1350, 1994. 

The results show the ability of Raman spectroscopy to classify cervical cancer and pre-cancer with high sensitivity and specificity. These classifications are based on biochemical changes known to accompany cervical cancer such as loss of differentiation and increased proliferation. This study shows the capability of Raman microspectroscopy to investigate not only the tissue but also the cells within the tissue, as it is known that a tumour can contain a heterogeneous population of cells. 

Morjani, H., et al.. Molecular and Cellular Interactions between Intoplicine, DNA, and Topoisomerase II Studied by Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering Spectroscopy. Cancer Res., (1993). S3 p. 4784-4790. 

Sekhar et al. identified another means of using metal-coated silica nanowires for the detection of cancer [41]. Here, the metal-decorated silica nanowires under study acted as a filter, such that their high selectivity made them effective in the diagnosis of cancers and other diseases. Specifically, the nanowires could detect interleukin-10 (IL-10) and osteopontin (OPN). For a closer examination of the selectivity of the metal nanoclusters, Raman spectroscopy can be used to study the affinity of certain substrate surfaces towards biomarkers. The substrate itself must be chosen carefully as this will affect the Raman scattering from the biomarkers. 

Study of support vector machine and serum surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for noninvasive esophageal cancer detection. J. Biomed. Opt. 18, 027008 (2013)... 

R.M. Liu, Y. Xiong, W.Y. Tang, Y. Guo, X.H. Yan, M.Z. Si, Near-infrared surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (NIR-SERS) studies on oxyheamoglobin (OxyHb) of liver cancer based on PVA-Ag nanofilm. J. Raman Spectrosc. 44, 362 (2013a)... 

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