Identification and classification of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells from peripheral blood by using Raman spectroscopy

In this work we have used the Raman spectroscopy to identify and classify normal B cells, collected from different healthy patients, versus three different B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) cell lines (RS4;11, REH and MN60), by analyzing their biochemical features. Moreover, we have studied the effects of low-dose treatments of methotrexate (MTX), a key drug generally used in the BALL maintenance therapy, and all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA), a drug used in the maintenance therapy of a different leukemic disease [1]. We have found a regression of the disease in the three B-ALL cell lines after MTX-treatments, while there were no effects after ATRA treatments. In order to quantify the capability of our system to classify leukemia/normal cells, we performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and obtained an accuracy of 97% for differentiating between three leukemia cell lines. In addition, we obtained a high accuracy (about 99%) in the classification of normal B cells versus the three B-ALL cell lines after MTX-treatments.