A Retrospective Immunohistochemistry Study of the Expression of Glycine/ Serine Pathway Molecules in Solid Tumors

The purpose of this study is to determine the expression of molecules involved in the glycine/serine pathway using immunohistochemistry in solid tumors. Archived paraffin-embedded pathological specimens from the Department of Pathology, NUH will be obtained. Tissue microarray (TMA) is a high-throughput method of analysing large numbers of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor at a minimal cost and effort. To analyse the expression of molecules of putative relevance to the glycine/serine pathway, (such as PSPH, PSAT1, SHMT1, and GLDC), TMA technology will be utilised as previously reported (Kristiansen, Zhang, Soong). Tissue arrays will be constructed from solid tumors including cancers of the colon/ rectum, lung, breast, cervix, ovary, endometrium, fallopian tube, prostate, kidney, testis, stomach, liver, brain and lymphoma. One hundred cases of each tumor type (subject to availability) will be stained using immunohistochemistry. Patient Identifiers will not be collected. Societal benefit in terms of knowledge gained to improve understanding of cancer. No direct risk to subjects as this is a retrospective study of archived pathological tumour samples.