Gown Allen M, Willingham Mark C
PhenoPath Laboratories and IRIS, Seattle, Washington, USA.
J Histochem Cytochem. 2002 Apr;50(4):449-54. doi: 10.1177/002215540205000401.
Apoptosis has gained central importance in the study of many biological processes, including neoplasia, neurodegenerative diseases, and development. One of the limitations of many studies is the difficulty of specifically identifying individual apoptotic cells. Of the many specific methods developed to detect apoptotic cells, most are not applicable to histological sections of archival paraffin-embedded tissues. Recently, advances in the understanding of the molecular events in apoptosis have led to the realization that caspase activation is by far the most specific indicator of this cell suicide mechanism. Several publications have reported the development of antibodies directed at neoepitopes that are generated in various substrates through the action of caspases. One of these is that present on activated caspase 3, a ubiquitously distributed caspase that is a main effector caspase of the apoptotic cascade within cells. This study demonstrates the utility of using a recently commercially available antibody to cleaved caspase 3 in archival paraffin sections, suggesting that this may be a highly specific and sensitive method generally applicable to many studies of archival material.
细胞凋亡在包括肿瘤形成、神经退行性疾病和发育等许多生物学过程的研究中已变得至关重要。许多研究的局限性之一是难以特异性地识别单个凋亡细胞。在为检测凋亡细胞而开发的众多特异性方法中，大多数不适用于存档石蜡包埋组织的组织学切片。最近，对细胞凋亡分子事件理解的进展使人们认识到，半胱天冬酶激活是迄今为止这种细胞自杀机制最特异的指标。有几篇出版物报道了针对通过半胱天冬酶作用在各种底物中产生的新表位的抗体的开发。其中之一是活化的半胱天冬酶3上存在的表位，半胱天冬酶3是一种广泛分布的半胱天冬酶，是细胞内凋亡级联反应的主要效应半胱天冬酶。本研究证明了在存档石蜡切片中使用最近市售的针对裂解的半胱天冬酶3的抗体的实用性，表明这可能是一种普遍适用于许多存档材料研究的高度特异性和灵敏的方法。
