Vibration spectroscopy of biofluids for disease screaning or diagnosis : translation from the laboratory to a clinical setting

Mitchell, Alana L. and Gajjar, Ketan and Theophilou, Georgios and Martin, Francis Luke and Martin-Hirsch, Pierre Leonard (2014) Vibration spectroscopy of biofluids for disease screaning or diagnosis : translation from the laboratory to a clinical setting. Journal of Biophotonics, 7 (3-4). pp. 153-165. ISSN 1864-063X

Abstract

There remains a need for objective and cost-effective approaches capable of diagnosing early-stage disease in point-of-care clinical settings. Given an increasingly ageing population resulting in a rising prevalence of chronic diseases, the need for screening to facilitate the personalising of therapies to prevent or slow down pathology development will increase. Such a tool needs to be robust but simple enough to be implemented into clinical practice. There is interest in extracting biomarkers from biofluids (e.g., plasma or serum); techniques based on vibrational spectroscopy provide an option. Sample preparation is minimal, techniques involved are relatively low-cost, and data frameworks are available. This review explores the evidence supporting the applicability of vibrational spectroscopy to generate spectral biomarkers of disease in biofluids. We extend the inter-disciplinary nature of this approach to hypothesise a microfluidic platform that could allow such measurements. With an appropriate lightsource, such engineering could revolutionize screening in the 21st century.