Steady state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopic characterization of normal and cancerous urine

Urine is one of the diagnostically important bio fluids, as it has many metabolites and some of them are native fluorophores. There may be a variation in the distribution and the physiochemical properties of the fluorophores during any metabolic change and pathologic conditions. Native fluorescence spectroscopy has been considered as a promising tool to characterize the fluorophores present in the urine. In this study, we aimed at characterizing the urine of both normal and patients with confirmed cancer using steady state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy at 280 nm and 350 nm excitation. It is observed that the metabolites indoxyl sulphate and neopterin and its derivatives are responsible for altered spectral signatures at 280 nm, and 350 nm excitation. The overall spectral data were subjected to Principal Component Analysis and the resultant components were used as input in the linear discriminant analysis. As a total, 84% and 81.8% of samples were correctly classified at 280 nm and 350 nm respectively.