Monitoring Therapeutic Response in Cancers: A Raman Spectroscopy Approach

Cancer is a multifactorial disease that is often asymptomatic and is thus detected at an advanced stage. Late detection and resistance to treatment are two of the major reasons for poor prognosis. The inherent limitations of conventional tools in evaluating therapeutic responses, raise the need to monitor such responses during treatment. Raman spectroscopy is a rapid, label-free, minimally invasive optical vibrational spectroscopy technique that has been widely employed for cancer detection. There is also significant literature on its applications in intraoperative surgical margin assessment, chemotherapeutic drug monitoring, and prediction of radiation response. However, most books and reviews focus on the diagnostic and screening applications of Raman spectroscopy. This chapter describes the role of Raman spectroscopy in the therapeutic monitoring of cancers and discusses its prospective applications. The present work provides a brief introduction to the basic principles of Raman spectroscopy, concise information on cancer aetiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapeutics, and applications of Raman spectroscopy in the therapeutic monitoring of cancers. The role of Raman spectroscopy in monitoring conventional treatment modalities such as surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, along with novel treatment approaches such as immunotherapy and cold atmospheric plasma therapy, is discussed in detail. The chapter concludes with a brief introduction to the emerging field of Raman spectroscopy and artificial intelligence.