A rapid diagnostic approach for gastric and colon cancers via Fourier transform mid-infrared spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics from paraffin-embedded tissues

This paper describes the feasibility of Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform mid-infrared (ATR- MIR) spectroscopy method coupled with chemometrics for the rapid diagnostic approach and screening spectral changes for gastric and colon cancers from paraffin-embedded tissues. A total number of 82 tissue samples were analyzed by a simple ATR-MIR method combined with PCA, HCA, SIMCA and LDA methodologies. Spectral analyses showed significant differences for the molecular contents particularly about the lipid, nucleic acid, protein and other biomolecules in the samples of gastric cancer (GC) and colon cancer (CC) groups from their control/healthy groups. Significant changes in the characteristic of these molecules were only observed for cancer groups based upon the increment in their biosynthesis, and they could be utilized as diagnostic spectral biomarkers. Under the optimum conditions, SIMCA provided excellent classification for diseased and control groups, with 5% significance level. As well, 97.75% of the studied tissue samples were correctly discriminated on the basis of their origin by LDA. Consequently, the findings of this study highlighted the rapid diagnosis of gastric and colon cancer cases from paraffin-embedded tissues via ATR-MIR spectroscopy complemented with chemometrics. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using ATR-MIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics for the rapid diagnosis of gastric and colon cancers. Significant spectral differences were observed for molecular contents in the cancer samples compared to the control samples, indicating the potential of using these spectral biomarkers for cancer diagnosis.