RESEARCH ARTICLE
Identification and Characterization of Skin Biomolecules for Drug Targeting and Monitoring by Vibrational Spectroscopy
Natalja Skrebova Eikje*, 1, Katsuo Aizawa1, Takayuki Sota1, Yukihiro Ozaki2, Seiji Arase3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 38
Last Page: 48
Publisher ID: TOMCJ-2-38
DOI: 10.2174/1874104500802010038
Article History:
Received Date: 14/3/2008Revision Received Date: 8/4/2008
Acceptance Date: 9/4/2008
Electronic publication date: 8/5/2008
Collection year: 2008

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/license/by/2.5/) which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
The article discusses the application of vibrational spectroscopy techniques for in vivo identification and characterization of glucose biomolecules monitored in the skin of healthy, prediabetes and diabetes subjects; for molecular characterization of water and proteins in in vivo monitored patch tested inflamed skin of the patients with contact dermatitis; for description of nucleic acids and proteins at the molecular level with progression to malignancy in skin cancerous lesions. The results of the studies show new possibilities to assess activity levels of glucose metabolism in the skin tissue of healthy, prediabetes and diabetes subjects; activity and severity of inflammation; activity of the processes of carcinogenesis with regard to benign, premalignant and malignant transformation. Based on our findings, we suggest that vibrational spectroscopy might be a rapid screening tool with sufficient sensitivity and specificity to identify and characterize skin biomolecules in described diseases for drug targeting and monitoring by the pharmacological community.