Application of laser microdissection and reverse-phase protein microarrays to the molecular profiling of cancer signal pathway networks in the tissue microenvironment.

Laser-capture microdissection (LCM) is used to procure specific tissue cell subpopulations under direct microscopic visualization of a standard-stained frozen or fixed tissue section on a glass microscope slide. Protein microarrays can measure hundreds of analytes in a small input sample. A particular type of protein microarray, the reverse-phase array (RPA), is sensitive enough to accurately measure the small concentration of activated signal pathway molecules in microdissected tissue samples. This article explains how these two technologies, LCM and RPA, can be combined to yield molecular pathway data for the individualized therapy of the future.