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Effective and early cancer and infection diagnosis, as well as personalized therapy, necessitate new methods of differential diagnosis and represent an outstanding medical task. Within this contribution we will highlight our recent efforts in translating spectroscopic approaches with focus on Raman spectroscopy towards routine clinical applications. In the first part of this contribution, a series of innovative multi-contrast marker free spectroscopy approaches (both microscopy and endoscopy based) for a precise intraoperative tumor margin control and reliable tumor classification to initiate an individualized therapy plan as quickly as possible. The second part highlights our most recent efforts to use Raman spectroscopy for diagnosing infectious diseases. These efforts include (I) predicting the immune response based on the patient's health, (II) quickly identifying the infection-causing pathogen and, in the case of bacterial infections, its resistance pattern; and (III) assessing the patient's response to treatment. An essential, often neglected point in the research of novel diagnostic methods is the sample preparation. Therefore, promising techniques based on particles and chips focusing on the enrichment of bacteria will be presented. The introduced approaches comprise the entire process chain i.e. from sampling to the final diagnostic result, and have a high potential to significantly reduce the critical parameter ‘time’ to initiate a personalized lifesaving therapy as compared to the gold standard microbiology. Novel, multi-user infrastructures are needed to bring these recent advances to patients faster. The Leibniz Centre for Photonics in Infection Research developing market-ready light-based diagnostic devices and novel infectious disease treatments is introduced.
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