Cervical cancer detection based on serum sample surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy

In the presence of nanoparticles, the Raman signal is enhanced to the levels sufficient to detect a single molecule, therefore spectroscopy Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) is currently recognized as a detection technique extremely sensitive with high levels of molecular specificity. This is the first report in the cervical cancer detection based on serum SERS. The serum samples were obtained from 14 patients who were clinically diagnosed with cancer and 14 healthy volunteer controls. The serum samples were mixed with colloidal silver nanoparticles of 40 nm in the same proportion, using sonication. About 10 spectra were collected of each serum sample using a Horiba Jobin-Yvon LabRAM Raman Spectrometer with a laser of 830 nm. The enhanced Raman bands allowed identifying biomolecules present at low concentration as amide I and III, carotene, glutathione, tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylalanine. Subsequently, the processed SERS spectra were analyzed using multivariate statistical analysis including principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Preliminary results showed that SERS and PCA-LDA can be used to discriminate between cervical cancer and control samples with high sensitivity and specificity, forming an excellent support technique for current detection techniques.