2017 Volume 27 Issue 2 Pages 9-15
DNA ploidy analysis is one of the two principal applications of flow cytometry, along with cell surface antigen analysis. DNA ploidy analysis is positive in numerous tumors, but no clear conclusion can be obtained in some tumors. This may be attributed in part to measuring inconsistency and interpretation bias in the analysis. As the measurement method is complex for DNA ploidy analysis of solid tumors, it is difficult to conduct the analysis as a routine clinical procedure. Hence, we have developed the system named “High DNA Content Measuring Flow Cytometer” with a tissue pretreatment function, and a freeze-dried reagent kit for cell staining, in order to perform DNA ploidy analysis easily and reproducibly in non-specialized laboratories. Biopsy specimens from brain tumors of 87 glioma patients who underwent open surgery were analyzed to evaluate the utility of our system. We were able to automatically analyze the biopsy specimens with the system within ten minutes. We compared the results of the same pretreated samples between our system and the conventional method using a common flow cytometer, confirming that the malignancy index was well correlated between them (R=0.975). These results demonstrated that our fully automated DNA ploidy analyzer is useful for rapid determination of glioma presence in surgical biopsy specimens.
