We previously published a comprehensive review paper reviewing the Raman spectroscopy of biological molecules. This research area has expanded rapidly, which warranted an update to the existing review paper by adding the recently reported studies in literature. This article reviews some of the recent advances of Raman spectroscopy in relation to biomedical applications starting from natural tissues to cancer biology. Raman spectroscopy, an optical molecular detective, is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that has potential not only in cancer diagnosis but also in understanding progression of the disease. This article summarizes some of the most widely observed peak frequencies and their assignments. The aim of this review is to develop a database of molecular fingerprints, which will facilitate researchers in identifying the chemical structure of the biological tissues including most of the significant peaks reported both in the normal and cancerous tissues. It has covered a variety of Raman approaches and its quantitative and qualitative biochemical information. In addition, it covers the use of Raman spectroscopy to analyse a variety of different malignancies including breast, brain, cervical, gastrointestinal, lung, oral, and skin cancer. Multivariate analysis approaches used in these studies have also been covered. Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.