Mesoscopic characterization of prostate cancer using Raman spectroscopy: potential for diagnostics and therapeutics

Abstract

Current diagnostic approaches of PCa using needle biopsies have suboptimal cancer detection rates and a significant risk of infection. Standard non-targeted random sampling results in false-negative biopsies in 15-30% of patients, which affects clinical management. RS, a non-destructive tissue interrogation technique providing vibrational molecular information, resolved the highly complex architecture of the prostate and detect cancer with high accuracy using a fibre optic probe to interrogate radical prostatectomy (RP) specimens from 32 patients (947 spectra). This proof-of-principle paves the way for the development of in vivo tumour targeting spectroscopy tools for informed biopsy collection to address the clinical need for accurate PCa diagnosis and possibly to improve surgical resection during RP as a complement to histopathological analysis.

“Real-time” Assessment of Surgical Margins During Radical Prostatectomy: State-of-the-Art

“…76,77 Different types of spectroscopies have been used in the field of PCa (Table 2), including fluorescence spectroscopy, 77 elastic scattering spectroscopies, 76,78,79 and inelastic scattering spectroscopy. 24,75,80,81 Most of the tissues' light scattering is elastic, where there is no exchange of energy between the photons and the molecules (Rayleigh scattering); however, only very few photons show inelastic light scattering with energy exchange. 82 Raman spectroscopy (RS) is a molecular tissue characterization technique that depends on inelastic scattering of light after excitation of tissues with monochromatic light.…”

“…24 Aubertini et al 24 demonstrated that combining the information from both regions (FP and HWN) improves PCa detection with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.91 compared with 0.89 and 0.86 for the FP alone and HWN alone, respectively. In a trial to study the potential therapeutic and diagnostic application of the in vivo fiber-optic RS, Aubertini et al 80 acquired 947 Raman spectra that were correlated with the corresponding histopathologic examinations of the interrogated tissues. They reported 82% sensitivity, 83% specificity, 83% accuracy, and an AUC of 0.9 for distinguishing prostatic from extraprostatic tissues.…”

Fourier transform infrared and Raman‐based biochemical profiling of different grades of pure foetal‐type hepatoblastoma

“…Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, as label‐free and high‐throughput vibrational spectroscopic methods, are two powerful complementary bioanalytical tools to probe secondary structure, dynamics, solvation and interactions of biomolecules . Bands in infrared (IR) or Raman spectra are molecule‐specific and offer unique information about biochemical composition of analysed samples .…”

“…As the development and progression of cancer are accompanied by the structural and compositional changes of biological tissues, both FTIR and Raman spectroscopies can be used to distinguish normal and cancerous cells in different organs and to track the overall biochemical changes during the malignant transformation process . Recently, FTIR and Raman techniques have been developed to enable the identification of malignant phenotypes in a high‐sensitivity, real‐time and noninvasive way .…”

“…Recently, FTIR and Raman techniques have been developed to enable the identification of malignant phenotypes in a high‐sensitivity, real‐time and noninvasive way . For instance, Aubertin et al developed a method of ex vivo tissue characterisation using Raman spectroscopy that made it possible to perform in vivo diagnosis and guide surgical resection during radical prostatectomy procedures for prostate cancer . Furthermore, O'Malley et al suggested that Raman spectroscopy‐based lipid quantification could be applied for diagnostics and prognostics of prostate cancer .…”