NON-INVASIVE DIAGNOSIS: FOURIER-TRANSFORM INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY MICRO-REFLECTANCE TO DETECT ORAL CANCER

Optical liquid biopsy using infrared absorption spectroscopy has received a great deal of attention in the last decade, showing considerable potential for improving the diagnosis and monitoring of various diseases of diverse origins, especially oral cancer. The treatment of pathologies such as this, namely mouth cancer, for example, affects more than 749,000 people worldwide (including salivary glands, the entire oral cavity, oropharynx and oropharynx). Biofluids such as saliva are rich in chemical information, and collection is non-invasive. In this study, saliva samples from patients diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and without the pathology (Control) were subjected to micro-reflectance infrared absorption spectroscopy to discern their spectral signatures and then carry out a comparative analysis using multivariate analyses such as PLSDA (Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis) and SVM (Support Vector Machine). Histidine, tyrosine and tryptophan biomolecules were shown to be potential biomarkers.

This work was supported by Brazilian agencies Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Est. de S. Paulo (FAPESP), proc. 2016/08633-0, 2019/11077-0, 2022/00153-0; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), procs. 311933/2021-1 and 406761/2022-1 – INCT INTERAS.