Cycling Cell Numbers Point to Increased High Grade Cervical Abnormality

In their recent paper Canham et al. (PLoS One 2014 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0115379) describe the  correlation of a number of useful biomarkers to better predict the grade of disease in patients and therefore select appropriate severity of therapeutic regime.  One of these biomarkers was determined to be the proliferative state of the tumour cell population.

Briefly, patient LBC samples were filtered to provide a cellular sample suitable for flow cytometric analysis, treated with combinations of antibodies against biomarkers and with a fluorescent DNA intercalating dye to report a simplified cell cycle analysis of G0/G1 vs S/G2/M.

DRAQ5 was selected as the DNA intercalating dye due to its favourable spectral and operational properties.  The DRAQ5 data was initially used to exclude debris and doublets as well as generate a proliferative index of the cell population.

Quoting the article: "Flow cytometric analysis of numbers of cycling cells in cervical samples also differentiated normal from high grade disease, regardless of the HPV status of the normal samples, indicating that the increase was disease and not simply HPV-infection related. The increase in numbers of cycling cells was seen whether high grade disease was based on histological examination of a biopsy or on cytology only. This indicates that this testing modality might be applicable in a wider screening context as a laboratory triage test for significant disease."

This work holds out new prospects to better identify the high risk patients and to improve their survival rates.

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