Quantification of tryptophan in different layers of oral cancer tissue using fluorescence polarization technique

Abstract

Oral cancer has a poor five-year survival rate and has not improved much in the past two decades which is due to late diagnosis. In current clinical practice analysis of Haematoxylin Eosin stained tissue biopsy is considered as a golden standard which is rather painful and routine check is not possible. In this regard, native fluorescence spectroscopy has been considered to discriminate cancer tissue based on relative alterations in the level of tryptophan. To estimate relative variations of tryptophan at different layers of tissue fluorescence polarization gating technique has been adopted which is based on the principle that the light from the superficial layer of tissue partially retain the polarization plane of incident light as they are less scattered while light from the deeper layer is completely depolarized due to multiple scattering. Integrated intensity of tryptophan was quantified, and subsequent statistical analysis has been carried out to evaluate the diagnostic potentiality of the proposed technique. It was found that the fractional variation of tryptophan in the superficial layer to the deeper layer was found to be statistically more significant in discriminating oral cancer than cumulative tryptophan in both layers.