Laser microdissection in pathology – research and practice

Editorial

Recent revolutionary developments in laser technology enable scientists to isolate single cells from large areas of frozen tissues or from paraffin embedded materials, chromosomes and chromosome fragments as well as materials from smears and cytospin preparations, thus providing a mechanism for collecting pure populations of cells for the analysis of molecular function. Microdissection of individual and pure cell populations from tissue specimens involves the coordinated use of microscopic, laser and robotic techniques for the localization, dissection, and capturing of cellular or subcellular material. Thus, this technology represents a major advance in medical and biological research, allowing us for the first time to perform the molecular analysis of individual cells within tissue specimens. At present and in the future, laser microdissection is bound to play an important role in gaining a wider knowledge of normal cell functions and in unraveling the molecular changes associated with the development and progression of complex diseases, such as cancer, neuromuscular disease, and immunological disorders.

The P.A.L.M. Microlaser Systems have proved useful as a highly sophisticated technological device for non-contact, highly precise micromanipulation. The power of bundled laser light alone suffices to capture, move, microsurgically process, and fuse objects of microscopically small size. High quality laser beams are combined with a regular microscope, thus allowing us to focus through the objective on areas of less than one micrometer in diameter. Most biological objects are transparent for the laser wave length used, and the actual laser activity is confined to the small area on which the laser is focused. Therefore, biological material can be processed without causing alterations of the biological characteristics. It is even possible to work in the insides of living cells without impeding their viability.

Inspired by the Laser Microdissection Symposium held at the Department of Pathology of the Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg (Germany) in February this year, we have compiled this issue of Pathology Research and Practice, in which researchers who used laser microdissection for the first time and experienced investigators report on their methodological and scientific experience gained in dealing with laser microdissection. This collection of articles demonstrates in an impressive way that pathology, research, and practice would be unthinkable without laser microdissection, which cannot find a more useful application than in the combination of these three items.

PATHOLOGY

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

(C) Urban & Fischer Verlag

http://www.urbanfischer.de/journals/prp

Pathol. Res. Pract. 199: 353 (2003)

0344-0338/03/199/06-353 $15.00/0

Regine Schneider-Stock

Molecular Tumor Genetics, Department of Pathology

Otto-von-Guericke University, Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany.

E-mail: Regine.Schneider-Stock@medizin.uni-magdeburg.de

Copyright Urban & Fischer Verlag 2003