Brief Reports
Copyright ©2005 Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2005; 11(21): 3290-3292
Published online Jun 7, 2005. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v11.i21.3290
Raman spectra of single cell from gastrointestinal cancer patients
Xun-Ling Yan, Rui-Xin Dong, Lei Zhang, Xue-Jun Zhang, Zong-Wang Zhang
Xun-Ling Yan, Rui-Xin Dong, School of Physics Science and Information Engineering, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng 252059, Shandong Province, China
Lei Zhang, Xue-Jun Zhang, Zong-Wang Zhang, Surgery of Liaocheng People’s Hospital, Liaocheng 250059, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to the work.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 60471049 and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China, No. Y2004G09
Correspondence to: Xun-Ling Yan, School of Physics Science and Information Engineering, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng 252059, Shandong Province, China. yanxunling@163.com
Telephone: +86-635-8238321 Fax: +86-635-8238864
Received: July 19, 2004
Revised: July 20, 2004
Accepted: September 24, 2004
Published online: June 7, 2005
Abstract

AIM: To explore the difference between cancer cells and normal cells, we investigated the Raman spectra of single cells from gastrointestinal cancer patients.

METHODS: All samples were obtained from 30 diagnosed as gastrointestinal cancer patients. The flesh tumor specimen is located in the center of tumor tissue, while the normal ones were 5 cm away from the outside tumor section. The imprint was put under the micros-cope and a single cell was chosen for Raman measure-ment. All spectra were collected at confocal Raman micro-spectroscopy (British Renishaw) with NIR 780 nm laser.

RESULTS: We measured the Raman spectra of several cells from gastrointestinal cancer patients. The result shows that there exists the strong line at 1002 /cm with less half-width assigned to the phenylalanine in several cells. The Raman lines of white cell were lower and less, while those of red cell were not only higher in intensity and more abundant, but also had a parti-cular C-N breathing stretching band of pyrrole ring at 1620-1540 /cm. The line at 1084 /cm assigned to phosphate backbone of DNA became obviously weaker in cancer cell. The Raman spectra of stomach cancer cells were similar to those of normal cells, but the Raman intensity of cancer cells was much lower than that of normal cells, and even some lines disappear. The lines of enteric cancer cells became weaker than spectra above and many lines disappeared, and the cancer cells in different position had different fluorescence intensity.

CONCLUSION: The Raman spectra of several cells from cancer patients show that the structural changes of cancer cells happen and many bonds rupture so that the biological function of cells are lost. The results indicate that Raman spectra can offer the experiment basis for the cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: Raman spectra; Gastrointestinal cancer