Manual Microdissection

The new opportunities of modern assays of molecular biology can only be exploited fully if the results can be accurately correlated to the tissue phenotype under investigation. This is a general problem of non-in situ techniques, whereas results from in situ techniques are often difficult to quantitate. The use of bulk tissue, which is not precisely characterized in terms of histology, has long been the basis for molecular analysis. It has, however, become apparent, that this simple approach is not sufficient for a detailed analysis of molecular alterations, which might be restricted to a specific tissue phenotype (e.g., tumor or healthy tissue, stromal or epithelial cells). Microdissection is a method to provide minute amounts of histologically characterized tissues for molecular analysis with non-in situ techniques and has become an indispensable research tool. Here, we describe a very simple technique for microdissection of tissues that can easily and cost effectively be established.