Single Cancer Cell Detection by Near Infrared Microspectroscopy, Infrared Chemical Imaging and Fluorescence Microspectroscopy

Novel techniques are currently being developed and established for the accurate chemical analysis and detection of single cancer cells, single embryos and single seeds by Fourier Transform Near Infrared (FT-NIR) Microspectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR), Fluorescence and High-Resolution NMR (HR-NMR). The first FT-NIR chemical images of biological systems approaching 1micron resolution are here reported. 400 and 500 MHz, H-1 NMR analyses were carried out that allowed the selection of mutagenized embryos. Detailed chemical analyses are being demonstrated to be also possible by FT-NIR Chemical Imaging/ Microspectroscopy of single cancer cells. FT-NIR Microspectroscopy and Chemical Imaging are also shown to be potentially important in Functional Genomics and Proteomics research through the rapid and accurate detection of high-content microarrays (HCMA). Multi-photon (MP), pulsed femtosecond laser NIR Fluorescence Excitation techniques were shown to be capable of Single Molecule Detection (SMD. Thus, MP NIR excitation for Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) allowed not only single molecule detection, but also molecular dynamics observations and high resolution, submicron imaging of sub-femtoliter volumes inside living cells with 0.25 micron spatial resolution, in both normal and cancer cells, as well as neoplastic tissues. These novel, ultra-sensitive and rapid FT-NIR/FCS analyses have, therefore, substantial potential for numerous applications in important research areas, such as: medicine, medical/cancer research, pharmacology, agricultural biotechnology, food safety, as well as clinical diagnosis of viral diseases and cancers.