Diagnostic Clinical Spectrometry and Spectroscopy—How to Get It Right

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Point-of-Care Diagnostics and Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2020) | Viewed by 10438

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ES, UK
Interests: biomarkers; clinical chemistry: cancer diagnosis; prenatal diagnosis; Haemoglobinopathies; clinical mass spectrometry; hCG; reproductive endocrinology and fetal antigens

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

For a minority of human disorder one genetic mutation leading to a single syndrome has been found. Developments in whole genome sequencing has meant that multiple genetic markers in a person’s genome can be detected relatively quickly and cost effectively. However, for the vast majority of common diseases and behavioural traits, the one mutation one attribute hypothesis does not hold true. Although associations can be made for genetic markers and any given disease/disorder/behaviour within large populations, at an individual level most are extremely poor discriminators. Furthermore, deregulation of gene expression can be due to multiple epigenetic events simply undetected by DNA sequencing.  Although transcriptomics has attempted to address this deficit - clinically this requires invasive disease tissue, is time consuming, costly and far more complex than originally believed; with the genome/epi-genome to disease phenotype being lost when mechanisms prevent aberrant mRNAs from being translated.

Expressed phenotypic markers are much better clinical indicators of disease status than a genetic susceptibility tests. Many disorders are multi-factorial and consequently multiple different markers are measured; but one at a time. This is time consuming and costly by conventional clinical chemistry technologies.

Emerging, spectroscopic technologies can measure multiple phenotypic marker, or changes in these phenotypic markers simultaneously: be it lipids, metabolites, blood proteins, antibodies or viral particles.  With small sample volume and astonishingly fast analysis times these techniques are set to make enormous advances in diagnostic medicine. Clinical mass spectrometry is one such technique which is rapidly being adopted as a new analytical tool in laboratory Medicine, followed by NMR and Raman spectroscopy. To be fully accepted as diagnostic sample test platforms the new approaches require new standards of operating and new understanding—getting it right will hold great rewards.

Prof. Ray Iles
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Multi biomarker/antigen profiling
  • Strong clinical disease association-diagnosis
  • Minimal to non-invasive sampling
  • Clinical Mass spectrometry
  • Clinical Raman Spectroscopy
  • Clinical NMR spectroscopy

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

10 pages, 8354 KiB  
Article
Nitrogen-Doped Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles Modified by an Electron Beam for Improving Human Breast Cancer Detection by Raman Spectroscopy: A Preliminary Study
by Jakub Surmacki
Diagnostics 2020, 10(10), 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics10100757 - 26 Sep 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2359
Abstract
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is commonly used as a pigment in paints, paper products, polymer compositions, and cosmetic products, and even as a food additive or drug coating material. In recent times, it has also been used in photovoltaic cells, semiconductors, biomedical [...] Read more.
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is commonly used as a pigment in paints, paper products, polymer compositions, and cosmetic products, and even as a food additive or drug coating material. In recent times, it has also been used in photovoltaic cells, semiconductors, biomedical devices, and air purification. In this paper, the potential application of nitrogen-doped TiO2 nanoparticles modified by an electron beam for improving human breast cancer detection by Raman spectroscopy is presented. Raman spectroscopy (RS) is a promising noninvasive analytical technique in cancer detection that enables us to retrieve a molecular signature of the biochemical composition of cancerous tissue. However, RS still has some challenges in signal detection, mainly related to strong concurrent background fluorescence from the analyzed tissue. The Raman signal scattering is several orders of magnitude smaller than the fluorescence intensity, and strong fluorescence masks a much weaker Raman signal. The Raman results demonstrate that the N-doped TiO2 electron beam-irradiated nanoparticles amplify the Raman scattering. The intrinsic properties of the adsorbed molecules from human breast tissue and the surface properties of the N-doped TiO2 electron beam-irradiated nanoparticles (the excited electron–hole pair at the surface) have a significant effect on the enhanced Raman signal intensity. Full article
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15 pages, 4522 KiB  
Article
Development of a Clinical MALDI-ToF Mass Spectrometry Assay for SARS-CoV-2: Rational Design and Multi-Disciplinary Team Work
by Ray K. Iles, Raminta Zmuidinaite, Jason K. Iles, George Carnell, Alex Sampson and Jonathan L. Heeney
Diagnostics 2020, 10(10), 746; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics10100746 - 24 Sep 2020
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 7527
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has stretched national testing capacities to breaking points in almost all countries of the world. The need to rapidly screen vast numbers of a country’s population in order to control the spread of the infection [...] Read more.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has stretched national testing capacities to breaking points in almost all countries of the world. The need to rapidly screen vast numbers of a country’s population in order to control the spread of the infection is paramount. However, the logistical requirement for reagent supply (and associated cost) of RT-PCR based testing (the current front-line test) have been hugely problematic. Mass spectrometry-based methods using swab and gargle samples have been reported with promise, but have not approached the task from a systematic analysis of the entire diagnostic process. Here, the pipeline from sample processing, the biological characteristics of the pathogen in human biofluid, the downstream bio- and physical-chemistry and the all-important data processing with clinical interpretation and reporting, are carefully compiled into a single high-throughput and reproducible rapid process. Utilizing MALDI-ToF mass spectrometric detection to viral envelope glycoproteins in a systems biology-multidisciplinary team approach, we have achieved a multifaceted clinical MALDI ToF MS screening test, primarily (but not limited to) SARS-CoV-2, with direct application to other future epidemics/pandemics that may arise. The clinical information generated not only includes SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus detection–(Spike protein fragments S1, S2b, S2a peaks), but other respiratory viral infections detected as well as an assessment of generalised oral upper respiratory immune response (elevated total Ig light chain peak) and a measure of the viral immune response (elevated intensity of IgA heavy chain peak). The advantages of the method include; (1) ease of sampling, (2) speed of analysis, and much reduced cost of testing. These features reveal the diagnostic utility of MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry as a powerful and economically attractive global solution Full article
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