Chirooptical analysis of blood plasma

Chirooptical techniques like electronic circular dichroism can be used to analyse blood plasma to detect changes induced by diseases such as cancer. In a proof-of-concept study published in Chirality, Czech researchers used electronic circular dichroism, fluorescence detected circular dichroism, and Raman optical activity (ROA) to interrogate human plasma because these methods are inherently sensitive to the 3D structure of chiral biomolecules like proteins.

The fluorescent background in the ROA and Raman spectra was reduced by ultrafiltration, which also removed the abundant protein serum albumin, which has not been associated with any degenerative and cancer diseases. The resulting spectra displayed useful features. For instance, the ROA spectrum had a negative band at 1243 cm^–1 typical for the partial beta-structure of proteins, which could be of interest in degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Future studies will test the ability of the chirooptical methods "to detect the slight conformational and stereochemical changes in the secondary and tertiary structure of biomolecules caused by pathological processes occurring during the aforementioned diseases."