**6. Conclusions**

FTIR microspectroscopy has recently emerged as a powerful tool in biomedical research, thanks to the possibility of providing, in a non-invasive and rapid way, a chemical fingerprint of biological samples. In particular, being successfully applied to the study of complex biological systems, it makes it possible not only to characterize in situ biological processes, but also to provide a rapid diagnosis of several diseases, such as cancer and amyloid-based disorders.

We should, however, note that the intrinsic complexity of the IR response of biological systems - due to the overlapping absorption of the main biomolecules - requires the support of an appropriate multivariate analysis approach able to draw out the significant and nonredundant information contained in these highly dimensional data. Indeed, only a suitable combination of biospectroscopy and of multivariate analysis would provide robust and reliable results through the identification of specific biomarkers, an essential prerequisite for unbiased result interpretation [19, 20].
