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1THz high resolution spectroscopy for medical diagnostics of cancer diseases of urinary tract
V.L. Vaks12*, V.A. Atduev34, A.V. Maslennikova24
1-Institute for Physics of Microstructures of Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod 603087, Russia 2- Lobachevsky State University, Nizhny Novgorod 603022, Russia 3- Privolzhsky District Medical Center of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Russia, Nizhny
Novgorod 603001, Russia 4- Privolzhsky Research Medical University, Nizhny Novgorod 603005, Russia
* [email protected], [email protected]
Nowadays the approach to diagnostics based on identifying and changing the metabolic human profile specified for disease as well as a therapy monitoring is a modern trend in medicine. Biological liquids (in particularly, urine) respond fast to changes in a person's organism at disease. Therefore they are used for clinical tests (the primary tests for making a diagnosis and therapy monitoring are general urine and blood tests). There are congenital and acquired diseases of the urinary system. Congenital diseases include pathologies of the structure and development of organs. Acquired diseases are the result of an inflammatory process or injury. Prostate cancer (PC) is one of the most common male diseases of the urinary system worldwide. The prostate specific antigen (PSA) is the most commonly used serum marker of prostate cancer. In addition to PSA tests in urine, other urine metabolites were studied to identify PC markers that allow detecting the disease at earlier stages.
In the metabolic approach biological liquids are the most promising objects for identifying biomarkers. The methods of spectroscopy operating in the frequency ranges from microwave to ultraviolet are used for biological and medical applications. The THz spectroscopy technique based on the effect of freely decaying polarization involves periodic induction and decay of macroscopic polarization in a sample of a gas mixture. The THz spectroscopy is the promising method for analysis of multicomponent gas mixtures of various origins. The aim of the work is application of nonstationary high-resolution THz spectroscopy for studying the characteristic set of metabolites of thermal decomposition products of urine of conditionally healthy volunteers and cancer patients to identify markers typical of PC.
The advantage of terahertz gas spectroscopy is high resolution because the absorption lines at working pressure are narrow and overlapped rarely. The line of rotational spectrum is fingerprint of specific substance because such absorption line parameters as central frequency and line strength are determined by molecular structure. Some substances of urine sample are volatile and appeared in gas mixture over the sample without heating. The heating of samples in liquid or solid states allows obtaining the gas state of sample. Some of large biological molecules as proteins, sugars, fats are decomposed at heating, but there are specific features in content of resulting gas mixture of products of thermal decomposition characterizing the patient state.
Differences in the composition and content of substances in urine samples of cancer patients and of conditionally healthy volunteers have been identified, which enables preliminary conclusions about substances that are promising for use as markers of prostate cancer in urine. The appearance of nitriles (acetonitrile, butyronitrile, pentannitrile, pentanedienenitrile, benzonitrile, aminopropionitrile) in the urine of prostate cancer patients can be caused by thermal decomposition of amino acids including ones in PCA. The presented approach is novel for urine analysis and is promising for developing a method for noninvasive study of the composition of biological liquids, which makes it possible to identify metabolite markers of various pathologies and diseases.
This research was carried out under RSF (grant 21 -72-30020, https://rscf.ru/project/21-72-30020/).
