Surface-enhancement Raman scattering of urine for prostate cancer risk assessment (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Prostate cancer is a heterogenous disease that has a varied range from indolent to highly aggressiveness. The routinely used biomarker, Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), is controversial due to over-diagnosis. A new approach is urgently needed to discriminate the indolent and lethal prostate cancer. We report the measurements of patient urine using surface-enhancement Raman scattering (SERS) as a potential means of differentiating aggressive and indolent prostate cancer types. To this end, urine samples from twenty prostate cancer patients with known clinical outcome are investigated in this study, with ten in each of the two groups: aggressive and indolent. SERS measurements, ten for each sample, are carried out in blind without revealing any clinical details to the investigators. Principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are used to statistically analyze the large number of Raman spectra to identify and classify the specific Raman features potentially associated with aggressive and indolent prostate cancer types. The experimental classifications are compared with the clinical outcome of the prostate cancer patients to demonstration the potential of SERS as an alternative method for patient screening and decision-making for the optimal treatment strategy.