B4
Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy of blood plasma in the diagnosis of cancer
Andrew Harris1, Anxhela Lungari2, Manjree Garg4, Nicola Cooper3, Sheila Fisher3, Jennifer Kirkham1, Xuebin Yang1, Alastair Smith4, Alec High1
1Leeds Dental Institute, Leeds University, Leeds, UK, 2Leeds University Medical School, Leeds, UK, 3Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK, 4AVACTA plc, YORK, UK
Background
Early detection of cancer has the potential for considerable impact on health by permitting early intervention and therefore best chance of cure. An ability to diagnose cancer on a peripheral blood sample would essentially allow diagnosis prior to specialist opinion; thus staging of disease and treatment options could be planned at the earliest possible opportunity. Previous studies have suggested that advances in vibrational spectroscopy technologies could meet the challenge of a means of cancer diagnosis using blood.
Aim
The purpose of this study was to determine whether vibrational spectroscopy of peripheral blood samples could potentially be used in cancer diagnosis.
Method
Blood samples were collected from 20 Head and Neck Cancer patients from the Leeds Head and Neck MDT clinic. 20 control samples were collected from Leeds Chest clinic. After centrifugation to remove cells, the resulting plasma was analysed using Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy. Raman data was subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) for data visualisation to check trend and statistical analysis (t-test) of Raman peaks. Fluorescence results were plotted graphically for visual comparison.
Results
PCA of Raman data indicated a large intra-group variation between patients of the same cohort (cancer/non-cancer) and overlapping of cancer and non-cancer groups. Analysis of Raman peaks indicated significant (p<0.05) differences between cancer and non-cancer for 5 peaks, although intra-group variation was large, making interpretation difficult. Fluorescence results indicated large inter-group variation with no consistent discrimination between cancer and non-cancer patients in any of the wavelengths tested.
Conclusion
The general population has much biochemical diversity and this is exaggerated when disease states and medication are factors. An ability to detect cancer in the blood stream, whether related to micro-metastases or host response would revolutionise diagnostics. However, we are a long way from this possibility in terms of vibrational spectroscopy and much further work is needed.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Cancer Research UK for funding the primary author, and Leeds Chest Clinic and Leeds Head and Neck MDT.
