Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy is a useful method for detection of trace amounts of molecules. It has already been successfully implemented for detection of explosives, food additives, biomarkers in blood or urine, etc. In the last decade, SERS spectroscopy was introduced into the field of health sciences and has been especially focused on early disease detection. In the recent years, application of SERS spectroscopy for detection of various types of human cancerous tissues emerged. Furthermore, SERS spectroscopy of extracellular fluid shows great potential for the differentiation of normal and cancerous tissues; however, due to high variety of molecules present in such biological samples, the experimental spectrum is a combination of many different overlapping vibrational spectral bands. Thus, precise assignment of these bands to the corresponding molecular vibrations is a difficult task. In most cases, researchers try to avoid this task satisfying just with tentative assignment. In this study, low temperature SERS measurements of extracellular fluid of cancerous and healthy kidney tissue samples were carried out in order to get a deeper understanding of the nature of vibrational spectral bands present in the experimental spectrum. The SERS spectra were measured in temperature range from 300 K down to 100 K. SERS method was implemented using silver nanoparticle colloidal solution. The results of the low temperature SERS experiment were analysed and compared with the results of theoretical calculations. The analysis showed that the SERS spectrum of extracellular fluid of kidney tissue is highly influenced by the vibrational bands of adenine and Lcystine molecules.

Date Published: 16 February 2017
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 10068, Imaging, Manipulation, and Analysis of Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues XV, 100681W (16 February 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2252907

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10068:
Imaging, Manipulation, and Analysis of Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues XV
Daniel L. Farkas; Dan V. Nicolau; Robert C. Leif, Editor(s)