FTIR spectroscopic imaging is an emerging tool for label-free, non-destructive characterization of tissues. The pathological annotation of tissue can be performed in an automated and objective manner, consistent with existing pathology sample workflows with high sensitivity and specificity often over 95% respectively. The approach is applied to fresh frozen or formalin fixed paraffin embedded thin sections of tissue biopsies (e.g. surgical resections or tissue microarrays) with spectral databases for colon, bladder and lung having been established to characterize tissue types. As part of working towards identifying differences between malignant and non –malignant samples as part of a research tool we were able to differentiate between the predictive subtypes of the adenocarcinoma in lung cancer tissue. It was also possible to grade colon cancer tissue as per current classification methods using FTIR imaging. In recent not yet published studies, this label-free technique was combined with laser-microdissection. Thereby the heterogeneity of tumor samples is overcome and homogenous cancer samples are provided for proteome-analysis and Next-Generation-Sequencing allowing for more accurate and sensitive analysis.   This approach is applied to differentiate subtypes of mesothelioma cancer and corresponding biomarkers were identified.