Discrimination of melanoma cell lines with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy

Abstract

Among skin cancers, melanoma is the lethal form and the leading cause of death in humans. Melanoma begins in melanocytes and is curable at early stages. Thus, early detection and evaluation of its metastatic potential are crucial for effective clinical intervention. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has gained considerable attention due to its versatility in detecting biochemical and biological features present in the samples. Changes in these features are used to differentiate between samples at different stages of the disease. Previously, FTIR spectroscopy has been mostly used to distinguish between healthy and diseased conditions. With this study, we aim to discriminate between different melanoma cell lines based on their FTIR spectra. Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded samples from three melanoma cell lines (IPC-298, SK-MEL-30 and COLO-800) were used. Statistically significant differences were observed in the prominent spectral bands of three cell lines along with shifts in peak positions. Partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models built for the classification of three cell lines showed accuracies of 96.38 %, 95.96 % and 99.7 %, for the differentiation of IPC-298, SK-MEL-30 and COLO-800, respectively. The results suggest that FTIR spectroscopy can be used to differentiate between genetically different melanoma cells and thus potentially characterize the metastatic potential of melanoma.