Double Feature: Broadband Infrared Diagnostics to tackle living systems (Dr. Mihaela Zigman & M.Sc. Marinus Huber )

Given that physiological phenotypes are driven by minor changes in concentration of thousands of different molecules one remaining challenge is the complexity of such biofluids. At the same time, although many low-abundant molecules are very informative for disease detection, these are often not detectable with conventional approaches due to the lack of sensitivity.

In the broadband infrared detection (“BIRD”) spectroscopy approach we have been developing and applying field-resolved spectroscopy (FRS) for molecular analytics of complex biofluids. We perform direct sampling of the infrared field oscillations emerging from the excited samples, enabling sampling with temporal separation of the molecular-composition-specific signals. We present initial results of infrared molecular fingerprinting for health monitoring and cancer detection (lung, prostate, breast and bladder cancer), and discuss the prospects of a new level of molecular sensitivity and molecular coverage for probing intact biological systems in their natural environment.