Evidence for balanced cell growth where protein and RNA content rise at a constant relative rate with respect to DNA content with increasing grade of cancer and with malignant transformation, is derived from analysis of infrared spectra of malignant lymphoma and transformed fibroblasts within the literature. This evidence is consistent with flow cytometry derived RNA-protein relationships, and supports the biosynthetic connection proposed here between the RNA/DNA ratio as calculated from the absorbance pulse at 1121cm^-1, and the protein/nucleic acid ratio as measured by the absorbance ratio A1650cm^-1/A1084cm^-1. The present analysis is the first to explain and show evidence for a simple unifying biomolecular content theory for interdependent changes seen within the fingerprint region (900cm^-1-1750cm^-1) of the infrared spectrum of cells. Structural changes to lipids and proteins in the wavenumber range 2800cm^-1-3000cm^-1, seen as increasing CH₃/CH₂ ratio and decreasing symmetric CH₂/asymmetric CH₂ ratio, are found for the first time to occur with increasing cancer (lymphoma) grade as well. These lipid/protein structural changes (2800-3000cm^-1) may reflect an increasing protein/lipid content ratio with malignant grade, and are the same as those shown recently for benign to malignant transformation, further supporting their cellular metabolic basis. Rising ribose content (1121cm^-1) is seen to correlate with rising 996cm^-1/966cm^-1 ratio (another index of RNA/DNA) with increasing malignant lymphoma grade as well, The proposed spectral connections have a high signal/noise ratio with respect to clinically meaningful information. They may potentially be applied to clinical cancer grading, or in vitro cancer treatment sensitivity testing.

Key words: Mid-infrared spectroscopy; Cancer diagnostics; Biological cells; Biochemical analysis; and Cancer grading.