Seminar of Physics of the Living State

(The Applied Physics Scientific Section)


2011 Academic Year

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Time: 15.30

Oppenheimer Meeting Room, Second Floor, Leonardo Building



Laser Spectroscopy
for analytical and clinical applications (*)

Santhosh Chidangil
Centre for Atomic and Molecular Physics,
Manipal University, Karnatka, India

(*) Summary. Technological advances in lasers, spectroscopic instrumentation, sensitive detection systems and sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms, have made laser spectroscopy techniques in clinical applications a reality. Considerable research using fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, and optical imaging are being carried out by our group at Manipal for early detection of oral and cervical cancers. Many biochemical changes precede morphological modification in the tissue on induction of cancer.  It is known that even a small primary tumor sheds few viable cells into surrounding matter.  It is also reported that elevation or induction of several proteins and peptides take place even in early stages of cancer.  These molecules are known as tumor markers.  By detecting these tumor markers, diagnosis of cancer can be done at an early stage, and this can improve survival rate considerably.  Protein profiling of serum, cytological smears, body fluids and tissue homogenates using HPLC-LIF technique developed in our laboratory, simultaneous detection of more than one marker at a time can be achieved.  All existing tumor marker detection techniques (Immuno Essay, Nano-biosensors, MALDI-TOF, SELDI-TOF) are time consuming and expensive.
Though the research and development on optical pathology for cancer diagnosis is growing very fast,  no attempt has been made to extend the laser spectroscopy based studies to explore cancer detection by combined use of Laser induced fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, protein profiling of clinical samples (biopsy tissues and body fluids) and Laser Induced Break Down Spectroscopy techniques,  Understanding the role of  trace elements in certain disease conditions (cancer, coronary diseases) is a very relevant problem for the medical community. We assembled a LIBS system for trace element analysis of environmental samples and is currently standardized for soil analysis.  My talk will cover an overview of the work under taken in our laboratory.

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(**) Biodata: Professor Santhosh Chidangil, obtained his Master Degree (Physics) and later Ph.D. (Physics) from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Manipal University, Manipal, India. His research interests are spread over the propagation of high intense laser pluses through biological media, applications of laser induced fluorescence, Raman Spectroscopy and protein profile analysis of clinical samples for the early detection of diseases. His emphasis is on different types of cancers.

    Recently he has been involved in setting up of a Laser Induced Break Down Spectroscopy system for trace element analysis of clinical samples. Professor Chidangil is also involved in teaching Molecular Spectroscopy and Biophotonics for the M.Sc. Photonics course offered by Manipal University, and has also guided 4 students for their Ph.D.
 degree.