Frontiers in Oncology (Oct 2020)

Spectroscopic Studies on the Biomolecular Recognition of Toluidine Blue: Key Information Towards Development of a Non-Contact, Non-Invasive Device for Oral Cancer Detection

  • Soumendra Singh,
  • Soumendra Singh,
  • Animesh Halder,
  • Animesh Halder,
  • Oindrila Sinha,
  • Nilasha Chakrabarty,
  • Tanima Chatterjee,
  • Aniruddha Adhikari,
  • Priya Singh,
  • Deep Shikha,
  • Ria Ghosh,
  • Amrita Banerjee,
  • Partha Pratim Das Mahapatra,
  • Amit Mandhar,
  • Maitree Bhattacharyya,
  • Surajit Bose,
  • Surajit Bose,
  • Saleh A. Ahmed,
  • Saleh A. Ahmed,
  • Ahmed Alharbi,
  • Ahmed M. Hameed,
  • Samir Kumar Pal,
  • Samir Kumar Pal

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2020.529132
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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Molecular interaction of aromatic dyes with biological macromolecules are important for the development of minimally invasive disease diagnostic biotechnologies. In the present work, we have used Toluidine Blue (TB) as a model dye, which is a well-known staining agent for the diagnosis of oral cancer and have studied the interaction of various biological macromolecules (protein and DNA) with the dye at different pH. Our spectroscopic studies confirm that TB interacts with Human Serum Albumin (HSA), a model protein at very high pH conditions which is very hard to achieve physiologically. On the other hand, TB significantly interacts with the DNA at physiological pH value (7.4). Our molecular studies strengthen the understanding of the Toluidine Blue staining of cancer cells, where the relative ratio of the nucleic acids is higher than the normal intracellular content. We have also developed a non-invasive, non-contact spectroscopic technique to explore the possibility of quantitatively detecting oral cancer by exploiting the interaction of TB with DNA. We have also reported development of a prototype named “Oral-O-Scope” for the detection of Oral cancer and have carried out human studies using the prototype.

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