Detection of structural disorders in pancreatic tumour DNA with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

We have investigated the application of Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to detect structural disorders in pancreatic tumour deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The DNA was isolated from the tumour and the adjacent histological normal tissue from 15 pancreatic tumour patients. The first derivative and vector normalised spectra were evaluated using hierarchical cluster analysis. Structural disorders in the tumour DNA were detected in the phosphodiester–deoxyribose spectral region. Based on such data within the spectral interval of 1192–1059 cm−1, classification was achieved with a sensitivity and specificity of 87 and 80%, respectively. The test with blinded samples from eight patients based on data from the same spectral region showed a sensitivity and specificity of 100 and 62.5%, respectively. Our finding constitutes a novel diagnostic approach and suggests that the infrared spectroscopic method can offer application to various clinical and laboratory studies, for which the status of the DNA structure is important.