Recent advances in surface‑enhanced Raman spectroscopy based liquid biopsy for colorectal cancer (Review)

Abstract

As colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the forms of cancer with the highest prevalence globally and with a high mortality, screening and early detection remains a major issue. Colonoscopy is still the gold standard for detecting premalignant lesions, but it is burdened by some complications. For instance, it is laborious, with some difficulties of acceptance for some patients, and is ultimately an imperfect standard, given that some premalignant lesions or incipient malignancies can be missed by colonoscopic evaluation. In this context, new non-invasive approaches such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) based liquid biopsy have gained ground in recent years, showing promising results in oncological pathology diagnosis. These new methods have enabled the detection of subtle molecular profile alterations prior to any macroscopic morphological changes, thus providing a useful tool for early CRC detection. In the present review, we provide a summary of published studies applying SERS in CRC detection, along with our personal experience in using SERS in the diagnosis of different oncological pathologies, including CRC.

Clinical Spectroscopy: Lost in Translation?

“…175 Other recent literature of particular interest includes publications by Avram et al. who developed a liquid biopsy for diagnosing colorectal cancer with SERS, 176 Nicolson et al. who reported the first in vivo study of surface-enhanced SORS for brain cancer imaging, 177 and Du et al., who reported a serum-based Raman spectroscopy analysis of the hepatitis B virus.…”

Raman spectroscopy and correlative‐Raman technology excel as an optimal stage for carbon‐based electrode materials in electrochemical energy storage

“…In another work, they described the detailed Raman spectra from graphite to tetrahedral amorphous carbon. [52] A three-stage model is proposed: First, graphite is converted to nanocrystalline graphite, and then the latter to low-sp 3 amorphous carbon, and finally to high-sp 3 amorphous carbon. The defects affect largely the specific capacitance in the double-layer supercapacitor electrodes.…”

“…It has been one of the research directions of Raman spectroscopy to continuously improve the measurement method based on the original techniques. For example, resonance Raman spectroscopy (When the laser wavenumber approaches the electron absorption wavenumber of an object, the laser photon energy is comparable to the energy of an electron transition; As a result of such resonance, the increase of Raman scattering intensity will occur by 10 2 -10 6 times), [34,35] Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy (The integrating the near-infrared excitation Raman technique and Fourier transform technique), [36] microscopic confocal Raman spectroscopy (The Raman spectrometer is combined with a standard light microscope; the laser beam is focused through a microscope into a spot with a diameter of 0.5-1.0 μm; Then, the Raman signal in a spot passes through the microscope and travels back to the spectrometer, where the spectral information is obtained), [37] and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (It is an surface enhanced effect associated with rough surfaces; Only three kinds of metals, viz., gold, silver, copper, and a few uncommon alkali metals [such as lithium and sodium] have strong surface enhanced effect; It is only after surface coarsening that gold, silver, and copper will have high surface enhanced activities) [3,38] are being developed and flourished.…”

“…Carbon materials have been widely used in electrochemical energy storage electrode materials because of their advantages such as abundance, good electrical conductivity, good stability, non-toxic, and pollution-free features. [1] Raman spectroscopy has been widely used in biology, [2,3] medicine, [4] and archaeology. [5] Raman peak intensity provides information about concentration and molecular orientation (polarization); the peak position of Raman spectrum clarifies the information of functional groups and structure; the peak displacement reflects the possible stress/strain and pressure; the information of defect, doping, and crystallinity can be obtained by analyzing half height width; Raman peak ratio corresponds to the relative intensity information.…”

Diagnosis of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma by Raman spectroscopy provides high efficiency

“…[ 8 ] In recent years, RS was applied for clinical purposes because several researches have revealed its capacity to identify the benign and malignant biological features of tumor. [ 9 ] Some other studies also pointed out that RS could serve during surgery to aid surgeons by identifying the exact borderline between malignant and normal tissue. [ 10 ] Meanwhile, RS examination could be carried out in vivo and compared with traditional imaging technologies, it was comparatively real-time, label-free, and non-destructive.…”