Molecular origin of blood-based infrared fingerprints

TL;DR

This study elucidates the molecular basis of blood serum infrared spectral signatures, revealing that changes in acute-phase protein levels are key indicators of lung cancer, aiding future clinical diagnostics.

Contribution

The paper combines infrared spectroscopy with biochemical and proteomic analyses to identify molecular sources of spectral changes associated with disease.

Findings

Acute-phase proteins significantly change in lung cancer.

Infrared spectral perturbations are primarily due to protein concentration shifts.

Framework established for disease-specific spectral analysis.

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated that infrared absorption spectra of blood sera may help disease detection. For clinical translation of this approach, it is important to determine the molecular origin of disease-related spectral perturbations. To that end, we supplemented infrared spectroscopy with biochemical fractionation and proteomic profiling, which provide detailed information about blood serum composition. We built a model to describe serum absorption based on the concentrations of the highly-abundant proteins and applied this framework to lung cancer detection. We find that it is the levels of acute-phase proteins that change most in the presence of the disease and generate its infrared signature. These findings inform future clinical trials and establish a framework that could be applied to probing of any disease.