A novel method to identify and isolate proliferative inflammatory atrophy (PIA) clusters and to extract high-quality PIA RNA.

Epidemiological and histopathological studies have indicated that proliferative inflammatory atrophy (PIA) of the prostate is closely associated with the onset and development of prostate cancer (PCa). However, accurate isolation of PIA still remains a difficult matter, as well as high-quality RNA extraction from isolated PIA. These issues generated a lack of molecular evidence to support the mechanistic explanation proposed for the progression of PIA to PCa. Therefore, the isolation of PIA and the extraction of high-quality RNA from isolated PIA are of great importance to further demonstrate the correlation between PIA and the development of PCa at a molecular level. In this study, clinical samples from radical prostatectomy were stored in liquid nitrogen, PIA was identified by H&E staining of cryosections, PIA clusters were isolated by manual microdissection, total RNA was extracted from the PIA clusters by Trizol, and RNA quality was determined using the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer. Our results showed that PIA might be isolated by manual microdissection of cryosections stored in liquid nitrogen from clinical radical prostatectomy and used for extracting high-quality RNA (RIN > 7.5) by Trizol. Therefore, the present study established a valid method to discover molecular evidence in support of the correlation between PIA and the development of PCa.