Investigation of blood vessels in glioblastoma at a micrometric scale: A comparative study by synchrotron and conventional micro-FTIR

Abstract

Glioblastoma, the most malignant brain tumor in humans, is characterized by being severely angiogenic and an increase in vascularization generally worsens the prognosis of patients. Finding the best approach to characterize glioma blood vessels (BVs) is very important in view of helping to determine any specific biomolecular markers of these tumors. In previous work by conventional FTIR spectroscopy we were able to discriminate some molecular markers in order to differentiate between normal and tumor BVs in glioma tissue sections. The aim of the present study was to assess whether FTIR microspectroscopy using a synchrotron radiation (SR) source could provide advantages over a classical globar IR source for detailed spectral analysis on such small features like micro-BVs. Using chemometric analysis such as PCA and HCA, the results show that a high brilliant SR beam provides a very satisfying quality signal compared with the globar source to study spectral images for relevant analysis of glioma big and micro-BVs and determination of subtle molecular markers characterizing them from the surrounding tissue. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.