Monitoring Therapeutic Response in Cancers: A Raman Spectroscopy Approach

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