Spectrometric and Spectroscopic Molecular Pathology and Diagnosis

This proposal seeks to discover a novel process for staging disease based upon the molecular characteristics of cancer stem cells. We propose to use physical techniques and inherent physical phenomena of the samples as the basis to investigate a new realm for molecular pathology and also to use these techniques as an aid to current pathology.The research is needed into the fundamental differences between the associated model cell lines to enable the elucidation of biochemical markers to aid histopathology. The techniques are very complimentary - SIMS and MIMS are mass spectral techniques and ATR-IR and Raman are spectroscopic. Utilising these techniques we will cover the full range of elemental (isotopic), molecular and macromolecular information. This will provide translational molecular markers which can be identified by more clinically routine methods e.g staining for chemicals elucidated by this study.