SERS analysis of serum for detection of early and locally advanced breast cancer

• DOI: 10.1007/s00216-015-8923-8
• Publication Date: 2015-08-08T07:05:35Z
• Authors: Silvia Cervo; Elena Mansutti; Greta Del Mistro; Riccardo Spizzo; Alfonso Colombatti; Agostino Steffan; Valter Sergo; Alois Bonifacio
• Keywords: Serum; SERS; Breast Neoplasms; Breast cancer; Diagnosis; Nanoparticles; Raman; SERS; Serum; Analytical Chemistry; Biochemistry; Middle Aged; Biochemistry; Analytical Chemistry; 3. Good health; Cohort Studies; 03 medical and health sciences; Breast cancer; Nanoparticle; 0302 clinical medicine; Case-Control Studies; Humans; Female; Raman; Diagnosi

In this contribution, we investigated whether surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of serum can be a candidate method for detecting "luminal A" breast cancer (BC) at different stages. We selected three groups of participants aged over 50 years: 20 healthy women, 20 women with early localized small BC, and 20 women affected by BC with lymph node involvement. SERS revealed clear spectral differences between these three groups. A predictive model using principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was developed based on spectral data, and its performance was estimated with cross-validation. PCA-LDA of SERS spectra could distinguish healthy from BC subjects (sensitivity, 92 %; specificity, 85 %), as well as subjects with BC at different stages, with a promising diagnostic performance (sensitivity and specificity, ≥80 %; overall accuracy, 84 %). Our data suggest that SERS spectroscopy of serum, combined with multivariate data analysis, represents a minimally invasive, easy to use, and fast approach to discriminate healthy from BC subjects and even to distinguish BC at different clinical stages.