Profiling the tumor microenvironment proteome in prostate cancer using laser capture microdissection coupled to LC⿿MS⿿A technical report

Laser capture microdissection (LCM) allows microscopic procurement of specific cell types from tissue sections. Here, we present an optimized workflow for coupling LCM to LC⿿MS/MS including: sectioning of tissue, a standard LCM workflow, protein digestion and advanced LC⿿MS/MS. Soluble proteins extracted from benign epithelial cells, their associated stroma, tumor epithelial cells and their associated stromal cells from a single patient tissue sample were digested and profiled using advanced LC⿿MS/MS. The correlation between technical replicates was R(2) = 0.99 with a mean % CV of 9.55% ± 8.73. The correlation between sample replicates was R(2) = 0.97 with a mean % CV of 13.83% ± 10.17. This represents a robust, systematic approach for profiling of the tumor microenvironment using LCM coupled to label-free LC⿿MS/MS.