title: Vibrational spectroscopy of biofluids for disease screening or diagnosis: translation from the laboratory to a clinical setting.
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 21(st) century.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biophotonics, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK.
authors.forename: Alana L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: Ketan B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Gajjar
authors.forename: Georgios
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Theophilou
authors.forename: Francis L
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Pierre L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Martin-Hirsch
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis*; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000175:diagnosis; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D013055:Spectrophotometry, Infrared / Q000379:methods; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared / Q000379:methods*; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman / Q000379:methods*; D014732:Vibration
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers
keywords: ATR-FTIR spectroscopy; Raman spectroscopy; biofluid; biomarkers; microfluidic platform; point-of-care; screening