Laser Capture Microdissection: A Gear for Pancreatic Cancer Research

Abstract

The advancement in molecular techniques has been attributed to the quality and significance of cancer research. Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the rare cancers with aggressive behavior and a high mortality rate. The asymptomatic nature of the disease until its advanced stage has resulted in late diagnosis as well as poor prognosis. The heterogeneous character of PC has complicated cancer development and progression studies. The analysis of bulk tissues of the disease was insufficient to understand the disease, hence, the introduction of the single-cell separating technique aided researchers to decipher more about the specific cell population of tumors. This review gives an overview of the Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) technique, one of the single-cell separation methods used in PC research.

Keywords

• Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM)
• pancreatic cancer
• intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN)
• single-cell separation
• hypoxia
• metastasis