Leica AS LMD – The Latest Advance in Laser Microdissection

Genetic regulations and alterations have been associated with normal development and function as well as diseased states. However, such changes often vary among different cell types in heterogeneous tissues. The ability to isolate specific cell types from heterogeneous tissues allows increased specificity and sensitivity of the molecular signals under analysis. With advances in genomic and proteomic technologies, nucleic acids and proteins can be extracted and quantified from a small sample of pure cell populations. Such advances increasingly require a precise and efficient method to isolate differentcell types from heterogeneous tissues.

Laser microdissection emerges as such a technology. It is also frequently referred to as laser capture microdissection (LCM) or laserassisted microdissection. Manual microdissection has been used for along time and is still used in certain fields. Manual microdissection allows dissection of largeregions and thick sections, but is verylabor intensive and not practical for single cell isolation. Laser microdissection, on the other hand, allows faster, easier, and more precise dissecting and transferring of individual cells as well as large regions of interest.

With laser microdissection, heterogeneous tissues are observed under direct microscopic visualization. Cells or tissue regions of interest areidentified and marked according to specific morphological and histological properties. Infrared or UV lasers are used to separate specific cells of interest from the surrounding regions, and various methods areemployed to collect the dissected cells.

Laser capture microdissection was first developed at the National Cancer Institute for separating cancer cells from normal cells in heterogeneous carcinomas to better analyze and compare molecular differences between diseased and normal cells . With this technique, an IR laser was used to isolate the cells and a contact method was used to transfer them. Since then, many improvements have been made to this technology that makes it easier, faster, more precise, and contamination-free. Laser microdissection technology has also been increasingly used in other research fields, such as neurobiology, developmental biology, plant biology, in addition to cancer biology and other disease-related researches.

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J. Ossi, A. Lee, J. Zhou
Leica Microsystems Inc., Germany
Scientific and Technical Information
Edition CDR 8, pp. 114–122
August 2005