Thursday, February 28, 2013

Cholesterol loading and ultrastable protein interactions determine the level of tumor marker required for optimal isolation of cancer cells

Cholesterol loading and ultrastable protein interactions determine the level of tumor marker required for optimal isolation of cancer cells

the authors also have a press release here about this paper

https://diigo.com/0x7cu

the key findings are

"Surface markers like EpCAM in the membrane of the cell are moving in a sea of lipids and cholesterol," explained Howarth. "Cholesterol plays an important role in the physical properties of the cell membrane, affecting its fluidity, elasticity and integrity. We found that the cell’s cholesterol level was crucial to how sensitively the cell could be isolated by the magnetic beads.
"Feeding cells extra cholesterol for an hour meant that even cells with low EpCAM levels were caught. It's worth bearing in mind that all of this is done to blood samples after they have been taken from the patient– we're not talking about pumping people full of cholesterol!"

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