Application of laser microdissection and quantitative PCR to assess the response of esophageal cancer to neoadjuvant chemo-radiotherapy

Tissues are complicated three-dimensional structures, composed of different types of interacting cells. Since the cell population of interest might constitute only a minor fraction of the total tissue volume, the problem of tissue heterogeneity has been a major barrier to the molecular analysis of normal versus diseased tissue. Thus, tissue microdissection represents one of the most promising techniques in molecular pathology offering the link between morphology and genetic analysis since it was established in the early 1970s. These first applications and further developments in the techniques enable preparation of morphologically well described and circumscribed cell populations of either tumor cells or surrounding tissue or even cytology specimens without contamination of unwanted cells. Laser capture microdissection is suitable for the dissection of both paraffin embedded and fresh frozen material. Further applications of the dissected genomic material are isolation of DNA and RNA as described later on followed by PCR or RT-PCR and sequencing.