The absence of early diagnosis contributes to oesophageal cancer being the sixth most common cause of global cancer-associated deaths, with a five-year survival rate of <20%. Barrett’s oesophagus (BO) is the main pre-cancerous condition to oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) development, characterised by the morphological transition of oesophageal squamous epithelium to metaplastic columnar epithelium. Current diagnostic methods involve invasive techniques such as endoscopies, and with few identified biomarkers of disease progression, OAC detection is costly and challenging. In this work, single-cell Raman spectroscopy was combined with microfluidic techniques to characterise the development of OAC through the progression of healthy epithelial, BO and OAC cell lines. Principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis were used to classify the different stages of cancer progression. with the ability to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells with an accuracy of 97%. These results highlight the potential for rapid and reliable diagnostic screening of BO patients.
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