Colon Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Colon Cancer, including details on causes, treatment, symptoms.

Evaluation of laser microdissection as a tool in cancer glycomic studies.

Korekane H, Shida K, Murata K, Ohue M, Sasaki Y, Imaoka S, Miyamoto Y

Department of Immunology, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, 1-3-2 Nakamichi, Higashinari-ku, Osaka 537-8511, Japan.

Laser microdissection (LMD) is a recent development that enables the isolation of specific cell populations from tissue sections. This study focuses on the potential of LMD as a tool in cancer glycomics using colon cancer as a model. LMD was performed on hematoxylin and eosin stained frozen tissue sections. Tumor cells and normal epithelial cells were selectively microdissected. N-Glycans from the LMD- and the bulk tissue-derived samples were liberated by hydrazinolysis and then labeled with 2-aminopyridine. After sialidase digestion, the resulting asialo-N-glycans were analyzed by normal and reversed phase HPLC combined with mass spectrometry. Comparison of the various N-glycan profiles with the aid of LMD identified seven characteristic N-glycans with significantly different expression profiles between normal and cancerous cells that could not be detected by conventional analysis. Thus, LMD is a potent and useful tool for analyzing variations in the expression of N-glycans by overcoming the problem of tissue sample heterogeneity.

Published 15 December 2006 in Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 352(3): 579-86.
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