Immunofluorescence Analysis of the Vimentin Expression in Epithelial Cells

Resumo

Abstract—A new method of double immunofluorescence analysis by flow cytometry is developed to evaluate the quantitative expression of the mesenchymal marker vimentin in epithelium cells of a solid tumor, which in turn is a mixture of different histogenesis cells. The method has a number of evident advantages compared to the clinically used immunohistochemistry technique for marker investigation: the intralaboratory precision of the results, gentle preanalytical preparation, lack of subjectivity in the interpretation of the results, and integral evaluation of the markers expression in a large number of cells from a large volume of the tumor tissue sample (≥5000 cells from a sample of ≥2 cm in diameter).