Surface-enhanced Raman scattering for rapid hematopoietic stem cell differentiation analysis.

Raman-spectroscopy-based methods, such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, are a well-evolved method to molecular fingerprint cell types. Here we demonstrate that surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can enable us to distinguish cell development stages of bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells towards red blood cells through the identification of specific surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy biomarkers. The approach taken here is to allow cells to take in gold nanoparticles as Raman enhancement platforms for kinetic structural observations presented here through the view of the multidimensional parameter contribution, thereby enabling profiling of bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells acquired from proliferation (stage one), differentiation (stage two), and mature red blood cells (stage three).