Metabolite profiling of human blood by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for surgery assessment and tumor screening in breast cancer

Mammography, a standard screening method for breast cancer, is effective for reducing the rate of death; however, it suffers from frequent false positive alarm and radiation risk. Besides, surgery treatment has a vital impact on the clinical outcomes of breast cancer, offering enormous benefits for breast cancer care and management. In this work, we analyzed the peripheral blood sample from breast cancer patients with pre- and post-surgery and healthy volunteers using label-free surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy technology based on silver nanoparticles. Results showed that distinct patterns of blood belonging to specific subjects could be profiled, and corresponding accuracies of 95% and 100% were achieved by multivariate diagnostic algorithm for pre-surgery vs. post-surgery and pre-surgery vs. normal groups, respectively, providing a unique blood analysis method for surgery evaluation as well as tumor screening in breast cancer. Graphical abstract