Figure 2.

Isolation of tumor cells and tumor stroma from complete primary tumor sections. LCM microdissection was used to isolate tumor and stromal areas to generate artificial samples from complete primary tumor sections. (a,d,g) From primary tumor sections, areas comprising mainly (b) tumor cells or (e) tumor stroma, or (h) random circles were isolated using LCM. Samples with different tumor percentages were made by combining multiple tumor cell areas (b) and multiple tumor stroma areas (e) at varying ratios. Artificial samples for which the original tumor-stroma proportion was retained were made by isolation of multiple circled areas randomly distributed across the tumor section (h). See Materials and methods for more details. (c,f,i) Primary tumor sections after LCM of desired areas. The tissue sections shown here were colored using hematoxylin-eosin staining.