Saliva as a first-line diagnostic tool: A spectral challenge for identification of cancer biomarkers

The paper concentrates on the role of saliva in the early diagnosis of salivary gland tumor. Due to the still not fully understood etiology of head and neck cancer, the fundamental objective of this study is to find tumor markers of salivary gland tumor progression. This work demonstrates the feasibility of Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) to track spectral variations between saliva samples derived from healthy volunteers and from salivary gland tumor (tumor mixus, TM) patients. Furthermore, a Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) has been used to detect a selected genes expression associated with neoplasm changes.