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Breast cancer has become the most diagnosed cancer globally, replacing lung cancer in 2020, with 2.3 million new cases and an estimated death of 685000 women. It is predicted that by the year of 2040 there would be an increase to around 3 million new cases and 1 million deaths worldwide. This calls for techniques for better and faster diagnosis, and in understanding the different biomarkers and the resulting metabolic alterations aiding the development and progression of the tumour. Obesity is associated with metabolic alterations that have shown to increase the risk of cancer and worsen its prognosis. It is associated with dysfunction of adipose tissue that alter the lipid metabolism resulting in excessive accumulation of adipose tissue at sites other than where they are classically found. Tumour cells depend on their microenvironment for nutrients, oxygen and for proliferation. The tumor microenvironment in breast cancer constitutes adipocytes, fibroblasts, endothelial cells, immune cells, and components of the extracellular matrix. The effects of adipocytes on the tumor prognosis are predominant as the breast is composed of abundant fatty tissue. Hence it is important to investigate this effects on molecular levels for understanding the communication between the adipocytes and the tumoral cells which is supporting the proliferation of the cancer. The current diagnostic technique of cancer includes a three step procedure including imaging (such as MRI, Ultrasound imaging), clinical examination and histopathological assessment of biopsy sample if a lesion is suspected to be malignant. However, histopathological assessment observes the morphologic abnormalities in the sample sections and is limited to provide information on the biochemical alterations likely to occur within the tissue even before the morphology is modified. Vibrational spectroscopy has demonstrated its potential to provide diagnostic information. Additionally, vibrational spectroscopy can facilitate the prediction of the biochemical progression for different diseases in a rapid non-destructive manner. Raman spectroscopy is an inelastic scattering process which has incredible potential in biological sample analysis. This technique is capable of rendering information on the vibrational modes of molecules, thus giving access to the biochemical information needed about the sample of interest. Raman spectroscopy is also less time consuming compared to conventional methods of tissue analysis, because the hassle of sample preparation is minimum or not required. The goal of this project is to study the alterations of lipid metabolic pathways in the tumour microenvironment and the impact of obesity in development and progression of breast cancer using vibrational spectroscopy.
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