Metallomics. 2022 Jul 22:mfac052. doi: 10.1093/mtomcs/mfac052. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death and tremendous efforts are undertaken to limit dissemination and to provide effective treatment. Various histopathological parameters are routinely assessed in breast cancer biopsies to provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic information. MMP-11 and CD45 are tumour associated antigens and potentially valuable biomarkers for grading aggressiveness and metastatic probability. This paper presents methods for quantitative and multiplexed imaging of MMP-11 and CD45 in breast cancer tissues and investigates their potential for improved cancer characterisation and patient stratification. An immunohistochemistry (IHC)-assisted LA-ICP-MS method was successfully developed and optimised using lanthanide tagged monoclonal antibodies as proxies to determine spatial distributions and concentrations of the two breast cancer biomarkers. The labelling degree of antibodies was determined via size exclusion-inductively coupled plasma-tandem mass spectrometry (SEC-ICP-MS/MS) employing on-line calibration via post-column isotope dilution analysis. The calibration of spatial distributions of labelled lanthanides in tissues was performed by ablating mould prepared gelatine standards spiked with element standards. Knowledge of labelling degrees enabled the translation of lanthanide concentrations into biomarkers concentrations. k-means clustering was used to select tissue areas for statistical analysis and mean concentrations were compared for sets of metastatic, non-metastatic and healthy samples. MMP-11 was expressed in stroma surrounding tumour areas, while CD45 was predominantly found inside tumour areas of high cell density. There was no significant correlation between CD45 and metastasis (p = 0.70), however, MMP-11 was significantly upregulated (202%) in metastatic samples compared to non-metastatic (p = 0.0077) and healthy tissues (p = 0.0087).
PMID:35867868 | DOI:10.1093/mtomcs/mfac052
