Abstract

The fields of photodynamic therapy (PDT) and radiation therapy customarily rely on lasers operating at a fixed wavelength (typically 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser), primarily because of the traditional availability of such lasers. However, Raman fiber lasers have made concurrent technological progress to emerge as wavelength-agile laser sources, capable of providing high laser powers at any wavelength, primarily from the 1 -2.0 um wavelengths. In this work, we explore for the first time, the use of a high power, wavelength-tunable Raman fiber laser for performing a wavelength-dependent cell-killing effect study on cancerous and healthy cell lines. Specifically, we irradiate at different wavelengths (from 1 um to 1.6 um) breast cancer cells and healthy cells from a cell line, cultured in well plates. Our in-house built Raman laser is power-tunable apart from being wavelength-tunable, the power and duration of irradiation was optimised for achieving the best contrast between viability of cancerous vs. healthy cells. Flow cytometry is used for cell-viability tests. The results give interesting insights on the choice of wavelengths and we show that 1064 nm lasers traditionally used are not the best choice of wavelength to use for this application while 1480nm lasers performed best. We conclusively demonstrate that other wavelengths exist for achieving the best death rate in cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells unharmed. This can pave the way for deployment of Raman fiber lasers as an alternative laser source for this application which can tune the output wavelength to optimize the required laser tissue interaction. For the keywords, select up to 8 key terms for a search on your manuscript's subject.

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