Validation of a Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1α Specimen Collection Procedure and Quantitative ELISA in Solid Tumor Tissues

摘要

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α) is an important marker of hypoxia in human tumors and has been implicated in tumor progression. Drugs targeting HIF-1α are being developed, but the ability to measure drug-induced changes in HIF-1α is limited by the lability of the protein in normoxia. Our goal was to devise methods for specimen collection and processing that preserve HIF-1α in solid tumor tissues and to develop and validate a two-site chemiluminescent quantitative ELISA for HIF-1α. We tested various strategies for HIF-1α stabilization in solid tumors including nitrogen gas-purged lysis buffer, addition of proteasome inhibitors, or the prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor 2-hydroxyglutarate, and bead homogenization. Degassing and addition of 2-hydroxyglutarate to the collection buffer significantly increased HIF-1α recovery, while bead-homogenization in sealed tubes improved HIF-1α recovery and reduced sample variability. Validation of the ELISA demonstrated intra- and inter-assay variability of less than 15% and accuracy of 99.8% ± 8.3% as assessed by spike recovery. Inter-laboratory reproducibility was also demonstrated (R² = 0.999). Careful sample handling techniques allow us to quantitatively detect HIF-1α in samples as small as 2.5 µg of total protein extract, and this method is currently being applied to analyze tumor biopsy specimens in early-phase clinical trials.