The international consortium, in which our Faculty of Medicine is involved, is initiating efforts to develop a novel laser platform that enables rapid and highly sensitive disease diagnosis using infrared and Raman spectroscopy and imaging techniques. Additionally, our university has been awarded a grant of €562,000 from the European Commission under the Digital, Industry, and Space category of the Horizon Europe Program to support the development of this project.

Project coordinator and Head of the Department of Biophysics at our Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Dr. Feride Severcan, announced that the project, titled “Ultra-Fast Chemical Analysis Imaging With Raman (uCAIR)”, aims to develop a new laser platform, which could function as a novel type of endoscopy, allowing for disease diagnosis at the earliest stages.

One Giant Step in Early Diagnosis

Prof. Dr. Feride Severcan, Head of the Department of Biophysics and project coordinator, emphasized that their project will make significant contributions to early diagnosis and the understanding of disease molecular mechanisms, thereby facilitating the development of new treatment opportunities. Prof. Dr. Feride Severcan is a globally recognized scientist who has been featured in Stanford University’s “World’s Most Influential Scientists” list annually since 2020. In her statements, she highlighted the challenges in diagnosing diseases such as cancer, neuromuscular, and neurodegenerative disorders at early stages, noting that definitive diagnoses are often made only at advanced stages. She pointed out that pathology results can be subjective and may vary depending on the examiner. Additionally, she stressed that some diagnostic methods are extremely costly, and delays in diagnosis can lead to increased mortality rates or higher treatment costs. Given these challenges, Severcan noted that the scientific community has intensified efforts in recent years to develop rapid, user-independent, cost-effective, and highly sensitive diagnostic methods for early disease detection. She explained that their newly approved project aims to establish a novel laser platform for Raman spectroscopy and microscopy, which will offer faster and more precisediagnostic results than current systems and function as a new type of endoscopy. Furthermore, she highlighted that the project’s photonics-based innovations could extend beyond disease diagnosis. The new technologies could be applied to fundamental research microscopes, microfluidic channel monitoring, biomarker identification, cystoscopy, and other relevant medical imaging devices, significantly broadening their impact in the field of biomedical research and healthcare.

“Bladder Cancer Selected as the Target Disease in the Project”

 Prof. Dr. Feride Severcan stated that the effectiveness of this laser platform—developed using nonlinear optical fibers, optronics, broadband Raman, and artificial intelligence technologies—will be tested on patient tissues and cells within the university. She provided the following details about the project: “Bladder cancer has been selected as the target disease for this study. The success of the newly developed system, as well as the Raman spectroscopic imaging results obtained using this system, will be verified by comparing them with the infrared and Raman spectroscopy and imaging results conducted within our university. In addition, our university will be responsible for providing all original research materials for the project, including patient tissue samples, as well as urine samples from both patients and healthy individuals, which will then be shared with our research partners.