Garchinger Maier-Leibnitz-Kolloquium: One spectrum, multiple phenotypes: Infrared molecular fingerprinting to profile human health and disease

by Dr Mihaela Zigman (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching)

Thursday 13 Nov 2025, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Lecture Hall, ground floor (west) (LMU building, Am Coulombwall 1, campus Garching)

Advances in optical spectroscopy have enabled new opportunities for probing living systems at a molecular level. Our aim is to advance and evaluate infrared vibrational spectroscopy as an analytical framework for cross-molecular profiling of systems at two complementary levels: I.) systemic profiling of human blood-based, cell-free matrices and II.) fingerprinting of individual biological cells.

By integrating infrared vibrational fingerprinting with machine learning, we demonstrate - across independent studies and cohorts – that infrared  molecular fingerprints reveal a remarkable technical reproducibility and striking temporal stability of infrared fingerprints in the same individuals [1, 2], forming a foundation for longitudinal health screening.

In large-scale clinical case-control studies involving thousands of individuals, we reveal that the infrared spectral information of cell-free blood contains signatures specific to four common cancer types [3,4]. Diagnostic  performance increases with cancer progression, supporting applications in primary cancer diagnostics. We further provide evidence for infrared spectra also enabling discrimination between different cancer entities4.

Beyond oncological abnormalities, we reveal that blood-based infrared molecular fingerprints can detect frequent health phenotypes and also distinguish between co-occurring non-communicable diseases [5]. This indicates that infrared vibrational spectroscopy may support multi-condition screening for a variety of conditions and enhancing risk stratification from a single measurement.

I will discuss the analytical framework, performance characteristics, opportunities, along with limitations of infrared molecular fingerprinting [6] offering disease-agnostic phenotyping capabilities with insights into explainable molecular healthcare analytics.

[1] M. Huber et al., Nature Communications 2021, PMID: 33686065
[2] T. Eissa et al., PNAS Nexus 2024, PMID: 39440022
[3] M. Huber et al., eLife 2021, PMID: 34696827
[4] K. Kepesidis et al., ACS Central Science 2025, PMID: 40290141
[5] T. Eissa et al., Cell Rep Med 2024, PMID: 38944038
[6] T. Eissa et al., Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. 2024, PMID: 39508580

Hybrid access via ZOOM:
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/98457332925?pwd=TWc3V1JkSHpyOTBPQVlMelhuNnZ1dz09
Meeting ID: 984 5733 2925
Passcode: 979953

 

kolloquium-13-11-25.pdf