No abstract

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) is the choice of treatment for locally advanced cervical cancers; however, tumors exhibit diverse response to treatment. Early prediction of tumor response leads to individualizing treatment regimen. Response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST), the current modality of tumor response assessment, is often subjective and carried out at the¯rst visit after treatment, which is about four months. Hence, there is a need for better predictive tool for radioresponse. Optical spectroscopic techniques, sensitive to molecular alteration, are being pursued as potential diagnostic tools. Present pilot study aims to explore thē ber-optic-based Raman spectroscopy approach in prediction of tumor response to CCRT, before taking up extensive in vivo studies. Ex vivo Raman spectra were acquired from biopsies collected from 11 normal (148 spectra), 16 tumor (201 spectra) and 13 complete response (151 CR spectra), one partial response (8 PR spectra) and one nonresponder (8 NR spectra) subjects. Data was analyzed using principal component linear discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) followed by leaveone-out cross-validation (LOO-CV). Findings suggest that normal tissues can be e±ciently classi¯ed from both pre-and post-treated tumor biopsies, while there is an overlap between preand post-CCRT tumor tissues. Spectra of CR, PR and NR tissues were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and a tendency of classi¯cation was observed, corroborating previous studies. Thus, this study further supports the feasibility of Raman spectroscopy in prediction of tumor radioresponse and prospective noninvasive in vivo applications.

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among women worldwide. Developing countries contribute more than 80% towards global burden. Over the last 2 decades, Raman spectroscopy (RS) has been actively pursued for cervical cancer detection. In view of latest development in Raman spectroscopic applications in cervical cancers, especially in vivo studies, an update of the same is presented in this article. This articles opens with a brief note on Anatomy of cervix followed by Etiology, and conventional Screening and Diagnosis of Cervical cancers. In subsequent sections, brief description of Theory and Instrumentation of RS is followed by a review of recent developments in cervical cancer detection; with emphasis on cell lines, exfoliated cells, ex vivo and in vivo, and therapeutic response monitoring applications in cervical cancer.