ATR-FTIR spectroscopy for the assessment of biochemical changes in skin due to cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma

Nonmelanoma skin cancers represent 95% of cutaneous neoplasms. Among them, squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the more aggressive form and shows a pattern of possible metastatic profile. In this work, we used Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectroscopy to assess the biochemical changes in normal skin caused by squamous cell carcinoma induced by multi-stage chemical carcinogenesis in mice. Changes in the absorption intensities and shifts were observed in the vibrational modes associated to proteins, indicating changes in secondary conformation in the neoplastic tissue. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to evaluate the potential of the technique to differentiate the spectra of neoplastic and normal skin tissue, so that the accuracy obtained for this classification was 86.4%. In this sense, attenuated total reflection (ATR)-FTIR spectroscopy provides a useful tool to complement histopathological analysis in the clinical routine for the diagnosis of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.