The Comparison Between Molecular Tumour Profiling in Microdissected and Surgical Tissue Samples.

BACKGROUND/AIM: Laser capture microdissection (LCM) is one of the most important tools in molecular and histopathological tissue analysis. We compared the expression level of protein phosphatase genes in LCM and surgical colorectal cancer samples to evaluate whether there is a significant difference in molecular profiling.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The expression levels of 99 protein phosphatase and 15 control genes were analysed in 104 microdissected, 81 surgical colorectal cancer and 25 control samples. Microarray expression data were obtained from the GEO Database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

RESULTS: The analysis revealed that over 60% of expression results were in agreement with LCM and surgically obtained samples while 32% of non-matched results belonged to the group where no effect was observed in LCM samples and down-regulation- or overexpression was reported in surgical samples.

CONCLUSION: Generally, it is more likely to find critical genetic alterations in surgically obtained than in LCM samples.