Re: TUNEL "in vivo"

Ugo Consoli (uconsoli@mbox.vol.it)
Mon, 27 Oct 1997 20:24:58 +0100

On the wave of the encouraging results showed by Z. DARZYNKIEWICZ et al. in
leukemia patients
we tried to recognize apoptosis in vivo in circulating blasts by using
TUNEL in patients affected by leukemias with high number of cells during
chemotherapy.
Although we were able to detect apoptotic circulating blasts, the maximum
number of TUNEL positivecells was 3% even in patients with a rapid decrease
in circulating blasts.
We studied these patient for several days every 24 hours until aplasia was
reached.
The results were "disappointing" and the question which arise is:
Is the number of circulating apoptotic cells just a matter of induction of
apoptosis, or of the effectiveness of the hystiocytes/macrophage tissues
which remove those cells from circulation?

Probably both!

Could we consider these two phenomena simultaneously?

Probably not!

It's better to work with solid tissues were apoptotic cells stay longer.
(See Raza et al.)
Good luck.

Ugo Consoli, M.D.
Institute of Hematology
University of Catania, ITALY
Fax: ++39/95-7311510
Tel: ++39/95-7435917

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Matthias Haury wrote:

Salut tout le monde...

Does anybody of you have experience of using the TUNEL technique to test
apoptosis in mouse thymocytes directly ex vivo (no incubation in culture) ?

I'm just curious if one can detect the apopotosis of double positive
thymocytes directly, or if a incubation in culture is necessary to see
anything...

I know that this subject has been discussed before, but it's very hard to
search the archive from here, as the network connections are terribly
jammed in the moment...

Thanks a lot again,

Matthias

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Matthias Haury Flowcytometry Dept Immunology Institut Pasteur
mhaury@pasteur.fr Tel: 33 (01) 40 61 31 29 Fax: 33 (01) 45 68 86 39
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