Evaluating glycocalyx morphology and composition in frozen and formalin-fixed liver tumor sections.

BACKGROUND

The glycocalyx (GCX) is a glycan structure on the vascular endothelium and cancer cells. It is crucial for blood flow regulation, tumor invasion, and cancer drug resistance. Understanding the role of GCX in human tumors could help develop new cancer biomarkers and therapies.

AIM

This study aimed to demonstrate microstructural changes in human primary and metastatic liver tumors (henceforth termed liver tumors) by visualizing GCX using surgical specimens and comparing formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sections (FFPEs) with frozen sections. The results of lectin staining were also compared between frozen and FFPE specimens to determine which was more useful for accurately assessing GCX structure and composition.

METHODS

Liver tumors and normal tissue samples from three patients were collected and processed into FFPEs and frozen sections, respectively. Lanthanum nitrate staining and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to assess the GCX structures. Twenty lectins were analyzed for their glycan components in the samples.

RESULTS

SEM revealed significant differences in GCX morphology among the cancer specimens. Frozen sections provided a more accurate GCX evaluation than FFPEs, showing distinct glycan compositions in hepatocellular carcinoma, colorectal carcinoma liver metastases, and melanoma liver metastases. Hepatocellular carcinoma samples exhibited a loss of N-acetylgalactosamine-related lectins.

CONCLUSION

The results revealed that liver tumors have distinct and bulky GCX compared to normal liver tissue, while frozen sections are more reliable for GCX evaluation. These findings highlight glycan alterations in liver tumors and contribute to the development of new cancer therapies targeting GCX on tumor cell surfaces.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Hiroyuki Tomita reports financial support was provided by JSPS KAKENHI, JST FOREST Program. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.