Introduction:
Providing information on cancerous tissue samples during a surgical operation can help surgeons delineate the limits of a tumoral invasion more reliably. Here, we describe the use of metabolic profiling of a colon biopsy specimen by high resolution magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to evaluate tumoral invasion during a simulated surgical operation.
Case presentation:
Biopsy specimens (n = 9) originating from the excised right colon of a 66-year-old Caucasian women with an adenocarcinoma were automatically analyzed using a previously built statistical model.
Conclusions:
Metabolic profiling results were in full agreement with those of a histopathological analysis. The time-response of the technique is sufficiently fast for it to be used effectively during a real operation (17 min/sample). Metabolic profiling has the potential to become a method to rapidly characterize cancerous biopsies in the operation theater.