Live Cell Isolation by Laser Microdissection

Podgorny, Oleg

October 16, 2018

Live Cell Isolation by Laser Microdissection

Webinar On-Demand

Laser microdissection is a tool for the isolation of homogenous cell populations from their native niches in tissues to downstream molecular assays. Beside its routine use for fixed tissue sections, laser microdissection may be applied for live cell isolation.
Unlike other well-established and widely used techniques for live cell isolation and single cell cloning—such as FACS, MACS, cloning by limited dilution, and so on—laser microdissection allows for capturing live cells and cell colonies without their detachment from the carrier. In other words, there is no need to prepare a single cell suspension before the isolation procedure using mechanical and enzymatic dissociation, which can affect cell fate after plating.
This feature of laser microdissection is desirable for stem cell research. We established a simple strategy for the efficient live cell isolation using the Leica Laser Microdissection platform. We were able to demonstrate not only colony formation from the isolated samples containing live cells, but also single cell cloning.
In this webinar, specimen preparation, laser adjustment, overall workflow, and limitations on live cell isolation by laser microdissection are discussed.

Key Learnings

How to best prepare your specimen for live cell isolation by laser microdissection
How to optimize your laser microdissection workflow
How to avoid common pitfalls of this technique