Applications of Infrared and Raman Microspectroscopy of Cells and Tissue in Medical Diagnostics: Present Status and Future Promises

Abstract

This paper summarizes the progress achieved over the past fifteen years in applying vibrational (Raman and IR) spectroscopy to problems of medical diagnostics and cellular biology. During this time, a number of research groups have verified the enormous information content of vibrational spectra; in fact, genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic information can be deduced by decoding the observed vibrational spectra. This decoding process is aided enormously by the availability of high-power computer workstations and advanced algorithms for data analysis. Furthermore, commercial instrumentation for the fast collection of both Raman and infrared microspectral data has rendered practical the collection of images based solely on spectral data. The progress in the field has been manifested by a steady increase in the number and quality of publications submitted by established and new research groups in vibrational biological and biomedical arenas.

Cellular discrimination using in vitro Raman micro spectroscopy: the role of the nucleolus

“…Recent decades have seen a notable expansion in exploration of biomedical applications of Raman micro spectroscopy, [1][2][3] due to the fact that it is a powerful, rapid and non-destructive label-free technique for studying biological systems such as tissue and cells. 4,5 Raman micro spectroscopy can detect chemical, biological and physical changes of biomolecules, and the specific information contained in the cellular Raman spectrum provides a molecular fingerprint of the sample of interest, which allows Raman micro spectroscopy to differentiate between normal and abnormal cells and tissues, indicating possible applications for example in cancer research.…”

Medical Applications of Infrared Spectral Imaging of Individual Cells

“…This figure, reproduced from [34] shows about 50 cervical squamous cells from a small section of a liquid-based sample that stain either pale blue or pale pink; in addition, this sample contains bacteria (1), polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs, 2), cellular debris such as naked nuclei, and one "abnormal" cell (3), indicated by an enlarged nucleus. The difficulty in classical (visual) cytopathology is the detection of a few percent of abnormal cells in a sample that may contain 1000-10 000 cells.…”

Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy discloses different types of cell death in flow cytometrically sorted cells

“…Two of those techniques are FTIR -and Raman spectroscopy. FTIR-and Raman spectroscopy have demonstrated biomedical applications in cancer research (Diem et al, 2012;Mantsch et al, 2002) including the ability to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells / tissues, spectral differences between different tissues and types of cancers, grading of the stage of cancer progression and drug discovery where new drug leads were tested against the proliferation of cancerous cells as well as investigations on the molecular mechanism of action of known chemotherapeutics. Some spectral regions have been identified where cell death induction led to spectral differences in FTIR data (Gaudenzi et al, 2004;Holman et al, 2000;Jamin et al, 2003;Munro et al, 2010;Notingher et al, 2003).…”