Non-invasive detection of hepatocellular carcinoma serum metabolic profile through surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Currently, clinical ultrasonography and serum alpha-fetoprotein have limited specificity and sensitivity for the detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In this study, based on Au@Ag NRs nanorods surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy(SERS), we performed a label-free, non-invasive SERS test on 230 serum samples (47 HCC, 68 breast cancer, 55 lung cancer, and 60 normal control) to identify distinctive Raman spectrum peaks as a metabolic fingerprint to predict HCC. This paper is the first to report on the detection of serum metabolic profiles in HCC patients through SERS. In addition, this study is also the first to detect and compare serum SERS in three types of cancer to determine the general serum metabolic alterations among cancer patients. Furthermore, SERS combined with orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis exhibited good diagnostic performance for HCC, with the receiver operating characteristic curve having an area under curve value of 0.991. The present study provides new insights into the detection of metabolic processes related to the biology of HCC through Raman spectroscopy.71