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Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing by Stimulated Raman Scattering Imaging of Deuterium Incorporation in a Single Bacterium
Published on: February 14, 2022
Raman spectroscopy towards clinical application: drug monitoring and pathogen identification
Ute Neugebauer1, Petra Rösch2, Jürgen Popp3
1Center for Sepsis Control and Care (CSCC), Jena University Hospital, Erlanger Allee 101, D-07747 Jena, Germany; Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Albert-Einstein-Straße 9, D-07745 Jena, Germany; InfectoGnostics Forschungscampus Jena, Philosophenweg 7, D-07743 Jena, Germany.
Abstract:
Raman spectroscopy is a label-free method that measures quickly and contactlessly, providing detailed information from the sample, and has proved to be an ideal tool for medical and life science research. In this review, recent advances of the technique towards drug monitoring and pathogen identification by the Jena Research Groups are reviewed. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy in hollow-core optical fibres enable the detection of drugs at low concentrations as shown for the metabolites of the immunosuppressive drug 6-mercaptopurine as well as antimalarial agents. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopy can be used to characterise pathogenic bacteria in infectious diseases directly from body fluids, making time-consuming cultivation processes dispensable. Using the example of urinary tract infection, it is shown how bacteria can be identified from patients' urine samples within <1 h. The methods cover both single-cell analysis and dielectrophoretic capturing of bacteria in suspension. The latter method could also be used for fast (<3.5 h) identification of antibiotic resistance as shown exemplarily for vancomycin-resistant enterococci.
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