Serum fingerprinting by slippery liquid-infused porous SERS for non-invasive lung cancer detection

Lung cancer (LC) remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer. Timely diagnosis is crucial for improving the clinical outcomes of LC patients. Serum molecular patterns reflect the physiological and pathological status of individuals, and are promising as diagnostic targets for malignancies. Here, we report a spectroscopic method for the rapid identification of LC based on the label-free fingerprinting of clinical serum samples with slippery liquid-infused porous surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SLIPSERS). We first demonstrate the capability of SLIPSERS for the delivery and preconcentration of serum molecules into the SERS hot spots from an evaporating liquid droplet, enabling the acquisition of vibrational fingerprints of serum molecules with only 1 μL of blood serum in minutes. The averaged SLIPSERS signals of the serum sample from a cohort of 33 LC patients and 23 healthy controls reveal both metabolic and biomacromolcular alterations under LC conditions. By analyzing the SLIPSERS data with chemometric methods, we further demonstrate that the SLIPSERS profiling of serum molecular patterns allows the reliable discrimination of LCs from healthy controls. Considering the ease of operation and high efficiency, our SLIPSERS-based serum biopsy method should hold great potential for non-invasive LC diagnosis.