Infrared Spectra of Microtome Sections of Human Colon Tissues

The development of a pressure-tuned infrared spectroscopic technique for biological tissues in our Ottawa laboratory has made possible the use of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy for the study of cells and tissue sections. Recently, using this technique we investigated structural properties of biomolecules in tissue specimens of human colon cancer. During this work we discovered that malignant colon tissue can be distinguished from normal colon tissue by a series of high-pressure infrared spectroscopic parameters. Furthermore, we observed that some infrared parameters of malignant colonic tissue obtained at atmospheric pressure were significantly different from those of normal colonic tissue. For example, there is a 2–3 cm−1 difference in the frequency of the symmetric phosphate stretching band of the nucleic acids between normal and malignant colon tissues.