RaNT director reveals “What Lies Beneath?” at transnational scientific conference.
Prof. Nick Stone, director of the RaNT programme, was in Philadelphia this week attending the annual PITTCON conference and expo, one of the premier gatherings for researchers and practitioners in the fields of analytical chemistry and spectroscopy.
Nick was invited to talk in a special session honouring Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Petrich, the 2019 winner of the Coblentz Society’s Williams-Wright Award.
Continuing the “What Lies Beneath?” talk series, Prof. Stone updated the audience on the latest advances in deep-Raman measurement techniques and the development of in vivo probe systems for healthcare.
Promoting RaNT at the conference, he focussed on temperature and pH spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (T-SORS & pH-SORS), two of the measurement techniques that he is currently pioneering. These are key to delivering the safe, controlled hyperthermia therapy with which RaNT hopes to kill tumour cells.
Read Nick's Conference Abstract
What Lies Beneath? II – Raman Molecular Analysis of Buried Lesions for Clinical Diagnosis and Monitoring
Author: Nick Stone
Vibrational spectroscopies have been shown to be powerful tools in the analysis of biochemical changes associated with disease, particularly when coupled to chemometric analysis. This ranges from the measurement of analytes in body fluids, to phenotypical changes in cells, to tissue biochemistry. Raman has shown particular value in the in vivo detection, identification, localisation and monitoring of disease. There are myriad clinical applications where spectroscopic tools can provide either a target for ‘blind’ biopsy, a validation of the histopathological decision, a surgical guide to abnormal tissues for resection and potentially a real-time diagnosis and prognosis. There is much work still to be done to take the potential to clinically accepted reality.
In 2014, the first talk in the What Lies Beneath series was presented at PITTCON. Here I follow up with the current state of the art in measurement of both physical and biochemical signals from the inside out. This will include advances in deep Raman approaches such as T-SORS and pH-SORS as well as in vivo probe systems. I will also explore the challenges in delivering such methods as tools in healthcare.
